Over the past decade, technology companies have undoubtedly played a pivotal role in disrupting many industries. Whether it be Uber in the automotive industry, Amazon in the retail sector or Twitter for communication, many individuals cannot imagine their lives without them. Yet, there exists a troubling and persistent commonality among them: the inability to turn a profit. As of February 2017, there were an estimated 185 unicorns – privately owned companies which are in excess of a billion USD – and most of them were not profitable despite a collective valuation of 646 billion USD (Vice news, 2017). These include well-known companies such as Uber or Spotify, which remain unprofitable to this day. Even after going public with an Initial Public Offering (IPO), many technology companies, such as Amazon or Snapchat, struggle to make a profit. One would think that the inability of an enterprise to turn a profit indicates the unsustainability of its business model, yet companies such as Amazon continue to crush their competition (Gustafson, 2017).

So how do such companies continue to compete on the market despite their huge losses. One word: venture capitalists. According to Vice news (2017), in order to properly assess the risk and valuation of a company, traditional investors pay attention to figures such as cash revenue or profit. Venture capitalists on the other hand assess a company’s valuation based on its potential. Couple this with the fact that technology companies have the capability of rapidly expanding, many venture capitalists have developed what Mark Cuban refers to as the “fear of missing out”, in particular to Silicon Valley investors (Baldwin, 2014). However, with the technology sector becoming optimized for growth, unicorns are increasingly at the whims of investors and their perception of the business’ performance (Ovide, 2017). Investors such as Bill Gates have called restraint unicorn investments while other individuals have started drawing parallels with the 2000 dot-com bubble, in light of an increasing number of traders betting in favour of falling share prices (Williams, 2016).

References
Baldwin, R. (2014). Mark Cuban says Silicon Valley investors suffer from fear of missing out. The Next Web. Retrieve from: https://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2014/09/08/mark-cuban-says-silicon-valley-investment-suffers-fear-missing/

Gustafson, K. (2017). Competing with Amazon is crushing retailers. CNBC. Retrieved from: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/03/31/competing-with-amazon-is-crushing-retailers.html

Ovide, S. (2017). Key to Control in Silicon Valley Is Simple: Make Money. Bloomberg Gladfly. Retrieved from: https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2017-03-24/key-to-control-in-silicon-valley-is-simple-make-money

Vice news (2017). Unicorn universe: Why so many tech companies are valued at over a billion without making a dime in profit. Retrieved from: https://news.vice.com/story/why-so-many-tech-companies-are-valued-at-over-a-billion-without-making-a-dime-in-profit

Williams, A. (2016). Should you believe in unicorns? Tech start-ups have polarised investors with Bill Gates calling for restraint but others arguing new tech will change the world. City A.M. Retrieved from: http://www.cityam.com/240621/investors-seek-the-truth-behind-unicorns

Artificial Intelligence is making strides in many industries and cybersecurity is one of them.

In an era with data breaches (e.g. Equifax) and U.S. allegations of Russian interference in its elections, cybersecurity has never been more important. This became even more apparent after the global WannaCry and NotPetya ransomware attacks back in May and June of 2017, respectively. According to Morgan (2017), 58% of companies, who are prime targets of cyber attacks, don’t have the necessary security measure in place to protect themselves. Yet Gammons (2017) states, that security threats such as malware, ransomware and phishing are on the rise. More alarming is the fact that over half (52%) of the companies who suffered a security attack in 2016 have decided not to change their cybersecurity strategy. Furthermore, a shortage cybersecurity specialists is only further aggravating the situation Morgan (2017).

In light of these problems, traditional means of ensuring cybersecurity might soon belong to the past. According to Choudhury (2017), U.K.-based firm called Darktrace intends on implementing Artificial Intelligence, specifically machine learning, in the field of information security. The company’s latest model, Antigena, which is modeled after a human immune system, responds independently to foreign security threats without compromising a firm’s business operations. Moreover, Antigena, which has been commercially available as of 2016, is capable of adapting to evolving threats. Yet, Darktrace does not intend on replacing cybersecurity specialists, but in fact complementing them:

“Once a threat is identified, Antigena automatically responds by taking proportionate actions to neutralize it and buy security teams enough time to catch up”.

On a related note, Takahashi (2017) states that McAfee CTO shares a similar opinion. The CTO reasons that A.I. is unable to thwart cyberattacks by itself as human hackers are better in thinking of creative means to breach security defenses. Furthermore, it is only a matter of time before hackers themselves deploy A.I. in their endeavors. Ultimately, Artifical Intelligence should amplify the abilities of existing cybersecurity specialists, which are in a shortage.

References
Choudhury, S.R. (2017). Cyber threats are growing more serious, and artificial intelligence could be the key to security. CNBC. Retrieved from: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/04/17/darktrace-on-why-artificial-intelligence-is-key-in-cybersecurity.html

Gammons, B. (2017). 6 Must-Know Cybersecurity Statistics for 2017, Barkly Blog. Retrieved from:
https://blog.barkly.com/cyber-security-statistics-2017

Morgan, J. (2017). Will artificial intelligence take over cyber security? Big Data Made Simple. Retrieved from: http://bigdata-madesimple.com/will-artificial-intelligence-take-over-cyber-security/

Takahashi, D. (2017). McAfee CTO says human-machine teams will stop cybercrime better. Venturebeat. Retrieved from: https://venturebeat.com/2017/07/14/mcafee-cto-says-human-machine-teams-will-stop-cybercrime-better/