TechTaffy

tech:

taffy

Akamai Appoints Rick McConnell As Executive VP, Products and Development

By TechTaffy Desk

Akamai has appointed Rick M. McConnell as Executive Vice President, Products and Development.

Mr. McConnell will be responsible for leading Akamai’s product divisions, including the company’s Site, Enterprise Cloud and Media divisions, and will oversee all development and management of Akamai’s market-leading product lines. Mr. McConnell will report to Paul Sagan, Akamai President and CEO.

Prior to this, Mr. McConnell was Vice President and General Manager of the Unified Communications Business Unit in Cisco’s Voice Technology Group. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Quantitative Economics and a Masters of Business Administration, both from Stanford University.

Mr. McConnell will be based in Akamai’s San Mateo, CA, office.

Just in

AI

Generative AI arrives in the gene editing world of CRISPR — NYT

New AI technology is generating blueprints for microscopic biological mechanisms that can edit your DNA, pointing to a future when scientists can battle illness and diseases with even greater precision and speed than they can today, writes Cade Metz.
AI

Estée Lauder, Microsoft to build AI Innovation Lab

The Estée Lauder Companies (ELC) and Microsoft Corp. announced the creation of an AI Innovation Lab to expand their global strategic relationship.
Around the web

Mark Zuckerberg says Meta will offer its virtual reality OS to hardware companies, creating iPhone versus Android dynamic — CNBC

Meta will partner with external hardware companies, including Lenovo, Microsoft and Asus, to build virtual reality headsets using the company’s Meta Horizon operating system, writes Kif Leswing. 
IT

Nvidia to acquire Run:ai

Nvidia announced an agreement to acquire Run:ai, a provider of Kubernetes-based workload management and orchestration software.
Around the web

Windows 11 Start menu ads are now rolling out to everyone — The Verge

Microsoft is starting to enable ads inside the Start menu on Windows 11 for all users, writes Tom Warren.