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Veritone – A Company That Is Investing In Unleashing The Undiscovered Potential Of AI.

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Humans are making progress with technology every day, hence we are constantly discovering and learning something. The real power of an invention remains unknown until and unless the entire world is trying to fathom it. Artificial Intelligence is a very prominent example to understand the various layers of how an invention slowly unfolds its power. Veritone, founded in 2014, by Chad and Ryan Steelberg has embraced the entrepreneurial journey to do the same. They have founded Veritone to explore and unleash different powers of AI that the world hasn’t witnessed before. The main goal of the company is to offer AI-powered solutions to solve some of the biggest complicated challenges of the modern world. 

About Veritone

Veritone is an artificial intelligence company based in Costa Mesa, California. The company was founded in 2014 and within the next few years went international. Veritone has offices in California, New York City, Denver, London, and other places. It is a publicly-traded company (traded on NASDAQ Global Market) and offers services to more than 1,500 customers across the globe. It has a very diverse customer base that ranges from media conglomerates to various police agencies. Veritone has two wholly owned subsidiaries, Veritone One and Veritone Digital that offer content management solutions and licensing services. Veritone’s most famous product is its proprietary software system, aiWARE which is used by worldwide customers. 

veritone
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Company’s Story

Both brothers, Chad and Ryan Steelberg, grew a deep interest in technology from a very young age. Their dream was to welcome the world into a new age of technology. Eventually, when they started their career life, their experience grew and wanted to build an AI-powered empire for the world. So, with the past experience and a zeal to create a new empire, the two brothers founded Veritone in 2014. Three years after founding the company, Veritone decided to go public but unfortunately suffered a loss of $59.6 million in that year. It also acquired a company called Atigeo Corporation during the same time. In 2018, the company acquired four new businesses, including, Machine Box, Wazee Digital, Performance Bridge, and S Media Limited. At the end of 2018, the company recorded a loss of $61.1 million. 

In 2019, the company heavily invested in ads for clients like Uber, LinkedIn, HelloFresh, Audible, etc. Since the company was facing losses, in 2020 it received a loan of $6.5 million from Sunwest Bank. The company later announced that it would return the full loan because it has the financial flexibility to maintain its capital position. In 2022, Veritone became the winner of the 14th Annual Media Excellence Awards for Best Artificial Intelligence. 

About The Founders

The two brothers, Chad and Ryan Steelberg founded Veritone in 2014 with the sole purpose to extend the application of AI by manipulating its unexplored power. But, at the same time, they made sure that the company also follows all the ethical rules to do the same. 

Apart from being one of the co-founders of the company, Chad Steelberg is the current CEO and Chairman of the Board as well. Before co-founding Veritone, he served as a board member of Brand Affinity Technologies for almost five years. He also worked at Google for a year as the general manager of the Audio Division. He is also the co-founder of an advertising company that was acquired by Google in 2006. The first company founded by Chad Steelberg was Adforce, an independent ad service company that was eventually acquired by CMGi. 

Ryan Steelberg is the co-founder of Veritone who also co-founded dMarc Broadcasting, an advertising company with his brother. He is currently the President of Veritone One and also became the President of the parent company in 2017. For seven years, he worked with Brand Affinity Technologies as its CEO and President. At Google, he worked as the Head of the Radio Division. 

Sabre Corporation

Sabre Corporation – A Famous Travel Tech Company That Was Originally A Part Of American Airlines.

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Sabre Corporation is a very well-known tech company in the travel industry. It was established in 1960 by American Airlines but in 2000 it was spun off and became an independent entity. Currently, it is a publicly-traded company with its headquarters based in Southlake, Texas, United States. The main goal of the company is to make travelling easier for the customers and offer a personalized travel experience with the help of innovative technology. Sabre has expanded to the Asian market with offices established in Bangalore and Singapore. It also has an office in London, Poland, and a few other places. 

Idea Behind Sabre

The idea behind founding Sabre dates back to 1953 when two legendary personas met on a flight. These two people are C.R. Smith, the then President of American Airlines, and Blair Smith, an IBM salesman. When they were travelling, they came up with the concept of the semi-automatic business research environment concept, i.e., Sabre. This new concept that they came up with was based on SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment) which was the first-ever major system to use interactive real-time computing. This SAGE system was developed by IBM for military purposes. So, with the idea based on IBM’s existing concept, American Airlines founded Sabre Corporation in 1960. 

Sabre Corporation
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Early Days

After the company was founded, Sabre installed its first reservation system in Briarcliff Manor in New York City. This reservation system was comprised of two IBM 7090 mainframe computers. This system was efficient was to processing 84,000 calls per day. In the next few years, Sabre Corporation was completely invested in building the nationwide network and by 1964 it became the largest commercial data processing (real-time) system across the globe. In 1965, the company was handling approximately 7,500 passenger reservations per hour. The Sabre system was relocated to a new centre in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1972, and the system was also upgraded to IBM System/360. 

In 1976 Sabre’s journey started in eventually entering the travel sector as the system was installed for the first time in a travel agency. This was very beneficial for the customers because the travel agents would have instant access to flights. Within a year, 130 more locations installed the system for convenience. In 1984, Sabre introduced a new tool called BragainFinder and it was the first-ever automated low-fare searching solution for the industry. In the next year, another product was launched that gave the customers direct access to reserve hotels, airlines, etc. During the end of the decade, the company launched an online travel agency called Travelocity and started a joint venture with Abacus International. 

Sabre in the 21st Century 

Entering the 21st century, American Airlines spun off Sabre Corporation and became an independent company. Sabre acquired several companies in 2000, namely, Preview Travel, Dillion Communication Systems, Gradient Solutions, and GetThere. In 2001, the company’s airline hardware and communications business was acquired by Electronic Data Systems (EDS). This year it also established Sabre Pacific and acquired Site59 and David R. Bornemann Associates. Some of the other companies that it acquired in the next few years were Showtickets.com, Lastminute.com, Calidris, Flight Explorer, etc. 

In 2007, Sabre Corporation was acquired by Texas Pacific Group and Silver Lake Partners. The acquisition continued and in 2012 the company launched Sabre Red App Centre. In 2014, the company went public on NASDAQ. The companies acquired by Sabre after it went public are Abacus International, Trust International, and Airpas Aviation.

Sean Menke – CEO of Sabre Corporation

Sean Menke became the CEO and President of Sabre Corporation in 2016. But currently, he is the CEO and the board member of the company since a new President was appointed. Sean joined the company in 2015 as the President of Sabre Travel Network. Before joining Sabre Corporation, he also played his role as the CEO of Frontier Airlines and Pinnacle Airlines. Sean went to Ohio State University followed by the University of Denver. 

Sina Corporation

Sina Corporation – A Chinese Tech Company Providing A Microblogging Platform Similar To Twitter.

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Sina Corporation is a famous multinational conglomerate based in China. It has three headquarters in Shanghai, Beijing, and the Cayman Islands. In November 1998, Wang Zhidong, Wang Yan, Ben Tsiang, and Hurst Lin founded Sina Corporation. The company had mainly four lines of business which are Sina Weibo, Sina Mobile, Sina Online, and Sinanet. Currently, Charles Chao is the CEO of the company has more than 60,000 employees. There are more than 100 million people worldwide who use the products and services of Sina Corporation. In 2003, the company was named “China’s Media of the Year” by Southern Weekend.

About Sina Corporation

The four founders founded Sina Corporation in Beijing in 1998 and after a couple of years established its financial headquarters in Shanghai. The company mainly focuses on offering its platform and services to Chinese users globally. It has 100 million registered users of which 10 million engages in free-based services. Apart from the users of China, the company also has Chinese users from North America.

Sina provides different types of services worldwide and has thirteen access points within Greater China and also tailored pages for overseas nations. International markets include Japan, Korea, the US, Australia, Europe, and Germany. The microblogging platform of Sina is also very famous such that more than 5,000 companies and across 2,500 media organizations in China use it.

Sina Corporation
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Major Sina Businesses

Though the company has four business lines, Sina Weibo is the most famous and revenue-generating of all. Sina Weibo is a microblog social network, a platform similar to Twitter, and the largest social networking service in the Chinese language. Based on the number of active users, Sina Weibo dominates 56.5% of the microblogging market in China. In the Sina Weibo platform, the company has more than 500 million active users and the browsing time is also comparatively more than any other competitors of Sina.

The cloud computing market of Sina Corporation also dominates the Chinese market. This is because Sina App Engine (SAE) is the earliest and the largest such platform in the country. Sina launched this platform in 2009 and this product is dedicated to web deployment, and hosting services for various corporations as well as independent developers. Currently, more than 300,000 developers in China are using the SAE platform.

History Of The Company

Sina Corporation was founded as a result of the merger between the two largest Chinese websites. In 1996, the most traffic generated internet portal of China SRSNet was established which later merged with Sinanet, a website that was developed in 1995 for the American Chinese community. After the merger of these two websites, Sina Corporation was founded and the services were extended to North America and Hong Kong. The merger lead Sina Corporation to outrun its rivals like Sohu and NetEase in terms of the most visited portal site. Sina Corporation started expanding very quickly in terms of launching new services and that way it attracted new customers.

In April 2000, Sina Corporation became the first company to get approved for listing in the Nasdaq National market through a variable interest entity (VIE) in the Cayman Islands. Sina was closely followed by its rivals in the following months of the same year to get listed in the same. In 2000, the official website of the company was selected for online coverage for the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney. In 2015, the online portal of Sina was attacked as there were certain allegations that it contained distorted facts and violated morality. Recently, Blizzard Entertainment sued Sina Games related to a game called Glorius Saga.

Charles Chao – CEO of Sina Corporation

Charles Chao is the current president and CEO of Sina Corporation. He joined the company back in 1999 when Sina faced various obstacles to get listed in NASDAQ. Charles made great efforts to establish Sina as a VIE which cleared the path for the company. Charles, before becoming the CEO of the company, also served as the CFO and COO. He is also the Chairman of the Board of Sina Corporation.

SS&C Technologies

SS&C Technologies – An American Tech Company That Provides SaaS To The Finance Sector.

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SS&C Technologies Holdings Inc is a fintech company based in Windsor, Connecticut. The company mainly sells software and SaaS (software as a service) to financial service companies. SS&C has a worldwide market and it is traded as a public company and listed in Russell 1000 component. William C. Stone founded this company in 1986 and he is still serving as the chairman of the board. The company has more than 24,000 employees and in the past years, it has acquired numerous businesses that specializes in specific fintech markets.

History Of SS&C Technologies

Founded in 1986, SS&C Technologies went public after ten years but again it was privatized in a leveraged buy-out followed by a second IPO. Currently, SS&C is a public company and it is known for acquiring companies from various horizons which brings a new customer base and unique product lines for specific sectors. They are mainly focused on bringing new products and talents into the company and increase its subsidiaries.

Till 2017, SS&C completed 47 acquisitions in total from the day it was officially launched. In its history of acquiring companies, SS&C made the largest acquisition went it bought Advent Technologies for $2.7 billion. This helped SS&C increase the intensity of its presence in the financial tech sector because Advent was one of its biggest competitors. This acquisition helped SS&C gain a big software company whose products were used by 4,300 various investment fund managers.

In 2005, SS&C Technologies acquired a company called Financial Models Company Inc for $17.70 per share. The company was a leading technology solutions provider for the investment world. The acquisition was completed in cash. SS&C spend a total of $10.13 million for buying the shares of this company and at the end of the deal, the total share of 91 percent was owned by SS&C. This marks another important acquisition in the history of SS&C because the company had to win a bidding war where several other companies participated as well.

SS&C Technologies
Image source: www.worldipreview.com

Recent Years

The last decade started with SS&C acquiring a broker-neutral system provider called Tradeware Global. After two years, SS&C acquired a Texas-based business called Hedgemetrix and this new deal brought twenty customers to the company. Currently, Hedgemetrix is a part of SS&C’s GlobeOp business. The same year, SS&C acquired another company called Thomson Reuter’s PORTIA. The deal was closed for $170 million. For $95 million in cash, SS&C acquired DST Global Solutions and it helped the company target Asia-Pacific locations and EMEA.

In 2015, the company announced that it would be acquiring Citigroup’s Alternative Investor Services business. This deal was closed for $425 million and the acquisition included Hedge Fund Services and Private Equity Fund services. The next company SS&C acquired was Primatics Financial for $122 million from the Carlyle Group and in 2016 the acquisition of Wells Fargo’s Global Fund Services Business took place. This strengthened the fund relationship of SS&C and also brought 384 new employees to the company. Some of the other companies acquired by SS&C in recent years are Salentica, Conifer Financial Services, DST Systems, etc.

Awards

In the last 35 years, SS&C Technologies has been the recipient of several awards and accolades. William C. Stone, for his immense contribution to the financial service industry, received the 2012 Entrepreneurial award from Marquette University. In 2015, the company received Custody Risk Americas Awards for the GlobeOp business unit. It also received the best portfolio accounting title for the Advent Geneva platform and also won WealthManagement.com industry awards for account aggregation.

SS&C Technologies – Founder

William C. Stone is famous as the founder, CEO, and chairman of the board of SS&C Technologies. Stone went to Marquette University and acquired a business administration degree in 1977 and started his company in 1986. Stone initially started the business from his home in Connecticut which has taken a gigantic shape today. Before founding the company, he worked at KPMG.