Amazon announces plans to bring 900 jobs to Fort Point
This week, Amazon announced that it will be opening a new Boston office next spring in the Fort Point neighborhood, bringing with it 900 jobs. The online retail giant already employs about 1,000 staffers between Boston and Cambridge. The third and latest Amazon office in Boston will be a 150,000-square-foot space at 253 Summer St., which is across Fort Point Channel from South Station. This spring, Amazon signed a 10-year lease for the property. [The Boston Globe]
Election startup Clear Ballot pulls in $18M
Boston-based startup Clear Ballot, which makes voting machines and voting software, raised $18 million in funding this week. The round was led by Bessemer Venture Partners, Ventureforgood and DN Capital, as well as a handful of other high-profile investors from Endeca and Harvard University. The round comes just as the startup prepares to expand its voting technology at a nationwide level. [Boston Business Journal]
Job referral startup Drafted raises $1.7M from Slack
Boston-based job referral startup Drafted has a new major backer in Slack, which invested $1.7 million in the company this week. Other investors in the round, which brought Drafted’s total funding to $4 million, include Lightspeed Venture Partners and other existing investors. The round comes on the heels of Drafted unveiling its new workplace chatbot, which helps companies automate the internal job referral process. The new round will be used to work with new integration partners like Slack and Greenhouse. [BostInno]
Visual IQ partners with Lotame to deliver people-based marketing insights
Visual IQ, provider of marketing intelligence software, unveiled a new strategic partnership with data management platform Lotame this week. Through this partnership, Visual IQ clients will receive an alternative view of marketing and advertising performance through the lens of audience data. Clients will be able to uncover which specific tactics and messages drive the best results for each audience segment across every channel including paid search. [Press Release]
Google’s Cambridge office is going to study how humans interact with AI
Google’s Cambridge office announced plans to launch an initiative to study how humans interact with artificial intelligence, taking on philosophical questions and the “human side” of AI. “The People + AI Research Initiative” will consider topics like how AI can augment jobs, ways to make AI technology more inclusive and what engineers consider when building machine learning systems. [The Boston Globe]
