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Top-10 Artificial Intelligence Startups in Italy
Italy is a country of beautiful chaos. Home to some of the world’s best fashion, cars, and food, the country has been a symbol of joie de vivre for centuries. It is also a country steeped in tradition, with a traditional family model and strong roots in Christianity. Her fun-loving people are known for having a great sense of humor, and nearly everything is fair game to poke fun at – like this colorful story about the origins of the country’s most popular religion. While most people think Jesus was black because he called everybody brother, liked Gospel, and didn’t get a fair trial, it turns out that’s not true. Jesus was actually an Italian. That’s because only an Italian son would live with his mama till he was 30, only an Italian son could think his mama was still a virgin, and only an Italian mama could think her son was God. (Ba dum tsss.)
Focusing in on business, Italy’s economy is sizeable (12th in the world by GDP) but it hasn’t grown much over the past year. The country’s GDP per capita (50th in world rankings) remains right around average when compared to the European Union as a whole. It also has a tendency to be a major pain in the European Union’s a33 once in while, not to mention having a reputation for rampant corruption and some really epic bunga bunga parties (lots of NSFW pictures here). Faults and failings aside, that doesn’t stop the Italians from partaking in the global AI race, and not unsuccessfully so. The government released a white paper on AI in March 2018 concentrating on how it can facilitate the adoption of AI technologies into public administration, and a consortium of universities established a national laboratory for AI shortly after that.
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Founded in 2014, Milan startup ELSE Corp (which stands for Exclusive Luxury Shopping Experience) has raised $2.7 million to develop a fashion technology platform that includes virtual retail, cloud manufacturing, and AI-based product design customization. Targeting brands, retailers, manufacturers, and independent designers, ELSE offers mass product personalization, virtual 3D e-commerce solutions including virtual fitting, and order generation for hybrid and distributed manufacturing of apparel and footwear. The platform can be integrated into any brand’s or retailer’s environment and covers all processes from designing a piece of clothing in 3D to on-demand production and visual merchandising.
ELSE’s AI offering incorporates personal size and style recommendation services that form the basis of its direct-to-consumer business model. The company’s ambition is to transform the fashion industry to a consumer-driven one from the current brand/marketing-driven state using technology. Customization and personalization are strong trends in the market at the moment, even re-igniting the ultra-expensive made-to-measure couture segment. ELSE’s tools are currently in beta testing stage.
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