The Gilbane Advisor

Curated for content, computing, data, information, and digital experience professionals

Category: Content technology news (Page 1 of 642)

Curated information technology news for content technology, computing, and digital experience professionals. News items are edited to remove hype, unhelpful jargon, iffy statements, and quotes, to create a short summary — mostly limited to 200 words — of the important facts with a link back to a useful source for more information. News items are published using the date of the original source here and in our weekly email newsletter.

We focus on product news, but also include selected company news such as mergers and acquisitions and meaningful partnerships. All news items are edited by one of our analysts under the NewsShark byline.  See our Editorial Policy.

Note that we also publish news on X/Twitter. Follow us  @gilbane

Snowflake makes enterprise data AI-ready with Snowflake Postgres

February 3, 2026 /

Snowflake, an AI Data Cloud company, announced advancements that make data AI-ready by design, allowing enterprises to rely on data that is continuously available, usable, and governed as AI transitions from experimentation into production systems. With new enhancements to Snowflake Postgres, the database now runs natively in the AI Data Cloud so enterprises can consolidate their transactional, analytical, and AI use cases onto a single, secure platform. To help ensure AI systems are trusted at enterprise scale, Snowflake is embedding enhanced interoperability, governance, and resilience features into its platform.

Powered by pg_lake, a set of PostgreSQL extensions that allow Postgres to easily work within an organization’s open and interoperable lakehouse grounded in Apache Iceberg, enterprises can leverage Snowflake Postgres to directly query, manage, and write to Apache Iceberg tables using standard SQL. This capability is delivered within a Postgres environment, so enterprises can eliminate data movement between transactional and analytical systems.

Enterprises need data that remains open, governed, and resilient as it flows across engines, formats, and environments. Snowflake is expanding how customers access, share, and govern their data. Open Format Data Sharing extends Snowflake’s zero-ETL sharing model to include formats such as Apache Iceberg and Delta Lake.

https://www.snowflake.com/en/news/press-releases/snowflake-makes-enterprise-data-ai-ready-with-snowflake-postgres-and-advanced-innovations-for-open-data-interoperability

Elastic adds high-precision multilingual reranking to new Elastic Inference Service

February 3, 2026 /

Elastic, a Search AI Company, made two Jina Rerankers available on Elastic Inference Service (EIS), a GPU-accelerated inference-as-a-service that makes it easy to run fast, high-quality inference without complex setup or hosting. These rerankers bring low-latency, high-precision multilingual reranking to the Elastic ecosystem.

Rerankers improve search quality by reordering results based on semantic relevance, helping surface the most accurate matches for a query. They improve relevance across aggregated, multi-query results, without reindexing or pipeline changes. This makes them valuable for hybrid search, RAG, and context-engineering workflows where better context boosts downstream accuracy. The two new Jina reranker models are optimized for different production needs:

Jina Reranker v2 (jina-reranker-v2-base-multilingual)
Built for scalable, agentic workflows.

  • Low-latency inference with strong multilingual performance.
  • Ability to select relevant SQL tables and external functions that best match user queries..
  • Scores documents independently to handle arbitrarily large candidate sets.

Jina Reranker v3 (jina-reranker-v3)
Optimized for high-precision shortlist reranking.

  • Optimized for low-latency inference and efficient deployment in production settings.
  • Strong multilingual performance; maintains stable top-k rankings under permutation.
  • Cost-efficient, cross-document reranking: v3 reranks up to 64 documents together in a single inference call, reasoning across the full candidate set to improve ordering when results are similar or overlapping.

https://ir.elastic.co/news/news-details/2026/Elastic-Adds-High-Precision-Multilingual-Reranking-to-Elastic-Inference-Service-with-Jina-Models/default.aspx

Upland announces BA Insight Platform with integrated AI search experiences for enterprises

February 3, 2026 /

Upland Software, Inc., a provider of AI-powered knowledge and content management software, announced the Upland BA Insight Platform. The new BA Insight Platform incorporates SmartHub, ConnectivityHub, AutoClassifier, Smart Preview, and Connectors to deliver search experiences that are more connected, more contextual, and more actionable. Features include:

  • Knowledge Graphs to deliver deeper, connected, and more contextualized insights by mapping relationships across complex datasets
  • Agentic Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) to provide more accurate answers to complex questions through conversational AI interfaces
  • Amazon Q Business Integration to enable users to connect and perform generative actions against organizational content via the seamless AI-powered assistant

BA Insight introduces native integrations with Amazon Q Business and AWS generative AI assistant, enabling organizations to unlock conversational search and gain actionable insights across all content sources, securely. By working closely with AWS, BA Insight ensures customers benefit from seamless deployment, robust security, and continuous innovation, empowering organizations to maximize the value of their information and accelerate their AI journey. The unified BA Insight enterprise search and AI enablement platform is available in AWS Marketplace.

https://investor.uplandsoftware.com/news/news-details/2026/New-Upland-BA-Insight-Platform-Delivers-Integrated-AI-Search-Experiences-for-Enterprises/default.aspx

DeepL launches voice API for real-time speech transcription and translation for instant multilingual communication

February 2, 2026 /

DeepL, a global AI product and research company, announced the general availability of DeepL Voice API. Developers can now integrate real-time voice transcription and translation capabilities into their applications, enhancing multilingual support for businesses.

The DeepL Voice API allows businesses to stream audio and receive transcriptions in the source language, along with translations into up to five target languages. The API provides a seamless experience, so language barriers do not hinder effective communication.

The DeepL API enables: 

  • Hire for expertise, not language coverage DeepL Voice API lets contact centers staff agents who understand the customer issue and the business context, even when they do not speak the customer’s language.
  • Expand talent pools while managing costs By reducing the need for language specific staffing, teams can centralize or distribute support more flexibly, which can lower operating costs and improve coverage planning.
  • Provide reliable coverage in urgent moments Real time translation helps teams maintain service levels during nights, weekends, and holidays, when fewer specialized language agents are available.
  • Two way understanding, not just text on screen Agents can follow the conversation through live translated audio, alongside on screen transcription and translation, so they can respond naturally and confidently in the moment.

https://www.deepl.com/en/press-release/deepl_launches_voice_api_for_real_time_speech_transcription_and_translation

Verndale acquires the Product Experience Division of Amp

January 22, 2026 /

Verndale, a digital experience and technology company, today announced the acquisition of the Product Experience Division of Amp, from Advantage Solutions. They will operate as Verndale as part of the acquisition.

The move is to Verndale’s position as a modern growth partner, expanding its ability to take brands from initial concept to fully built digital products, and continuously optimize them for measurable business impact.

The Product Experience Division of Amp is known for combining its product design, UX, engineering and digital marketing capabilities via an embedded approach to building digital product experiences for global brands across tech, CPG, healthcare, and consumer industries. The team brings deep capabilities in product strategy, rapid prototyping, product development, and ongoing management through SEO, analytics, and experimentation.

The acquisition strengthens Verndale’s ability to support the full lifecycle of digital experience, from ideation and UX through engineering, activation, and ongoing product management. It also expands Verndale’s reach into growth-minded verticals such as technology and CPG, where brands increasingly expect partners to blend product development with performance marketing and experience optimization.

This acquisition reflects Verndale’s continued investment in building a next-generation digital experience platform, combining product, UX, engineering, data, and marketing capabilities into a single, accountable partner.

https://www.verndale.com/about-us/news/verndale-acquires-product-experience-division-of-amp

MongoDB expands MongoDB for startups

January 15, 2026 /

MongoDB, Inc. announced an upcoming expansion to MongoDB for Startups, designed to help founders and builders take applications from prototype to global deployment. MongoDB for Startups companies now represent more than $200 billion in combined valuation, and this expansion gives early-stage companies a faster, more reliable path to scale by providing a production-ready data foundation and an integrated stack that works from day one.

With initial launch partners Temporal and Fireworks AI, MongoDB for Startups introduces a founder-first ecosystem to help startups avoid early infrastructure decisions that slow them down over time. In the AI era, founders face unprecedented complexity when selecting their infrastructure; choosing the wrong stack early can create long-term AI debt that stalls innovation. Through a curated partner ecosystem, the program gives startups access to infrastructure designed to scale without constant rework, by delivering a cohesive, production-ready stack through matched credits, coordinated onboarding and enablement content, and joint events across complementary technologies.

This expansion to MongoDB for Startups creates a simple, opt-in experience designed to help founders scale without assembling and maintaining disparate technologies. Eligible MongoDB for Startups organizations can access matched credit offers across a curated set of complementary technologies, including Fireworks and Temporal.

https://www.mongodb.com/press/mongodb-for-startups-expands-to-give-founders-a-faster-and-smarter-start-from-day-one

Box announces general availability of Box Extract

January 15, 2026 /

Box, an Intelligent Content Management (ICM) platform, released Box Extract. Powered by generative AI models from companies like Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI, and combined with agentic capabilities, Box Extract enables enterprises to intelligently and securely pull valuable information from content and save it as metadata in Box. With Box Extract, it is now easier for enterprises to automate workflows, accelerate decision-making, and get faster access to information and insights.

Organizational knowledge resides in the collection of contracts, product specifications, policy documents, charts, and other forms of unstructured content involved in day-to-day business operations. This content provides the critical context AI models and agents require to unlock meaningful business value.

Box’s agentic approach enables Box Extract to understand document structure and meaning, break it down into components, such as paragraphs, tables, or charts, and then pull out the most important information. Teams can create custom Extract Agents tailored to their business needs. These Box Extract Agents give customers the flexibility to store structured data alongside unstructured content as custom metadata, which can also be exported or synced to other systems such as Databricks and Snowflake.

https://blog.box.com/introducing-box-extract-get-actionable-data-enterprise-content-scale

Algolia and Microsoft collaborate on retail experiences

January 12, 2026 /

Algolia, an AI Search and Retrieval Platform, today announced a collaboration with Microsoft to provide retailers and brands with greater influence, accuracy, and visibility in AI-driven shopping experiences. The collaboration integrates Algolia’s real-time enriched product attributes (product data, inventory availability, and product pricing) into Microsoft Copilot, Microsoft Bing Shopping, and Microsoft Edge, to help retailers ensure their products appear correctly and competitively across emerging AI discovery surfaces.   

Algolia customers gain greater influence over how their products are represented across Microsoft digital sites. Retailers benefit from enhanced brand control and stronger context awareness within Copilot, Bing Shopping, and Edge, backed by fresher, deeper, and more accurate product data.  

AI-driven discovery becomes shoppable through real-time, retailer-approved data, giving merchants influence over external, “off property” AI surfaces. Retailers can now extend their merchandising strategies into LLM environments that were previously inaccessible. 

Algolia, with the help of Microsoft, is address critical gaps in agentic commerce, more dynamic product storytelling, and deeper insights into how products perform across Microsoft experiences for richer reporting and retail media measurement. 

https://www.algolia.com/about/news/algolia-collaborates-with-microsoft-to-drive-real-time-product-data-to-shopping-experiences

« Older posts

Policies

Contact

twitter   rss   Mastadon   Bluesky   Medium

Contact • customerservice@gilbane.com

© 2026 Bluebill Advisors (except for contributed posts which are licensed under creative commons)

Banner photos: Sakonnet Harbor, Little Compton, RI, Fort Point Channel, Summer St bridge, and Northern Ave bridge, Boston

Bluebill Advisors Inc logo

© 2026 The Gilbane Advisor

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑