SoftBank on Thursday announced that it will acquire robotics company Boston Dynamics from Alphabet, parent company of Google. SoftBank Robotics is the company's subsidiary that focuses on the development, sales and maintenance of humanoid and service robots. "Smart robotics are going to be a key driver of the next stage of the information revolution," said SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son."

Microsoft on Thursday said it has agreed to buy a Hexadite, which incorporates artificial intelligence in its automated responses to cyberthreats. The acquisition will help bolster the company's efforts to help commercial Windows 10 customers deal with advanced attacks on their networks, Microsoft said. The acquisition will include Hexadite's endpoint security automated remediation.

Pegasystems has deepened its 7-year-old relationship with Amazon AWS, and also has teamed up with Microsoft Azure, company officials told Pegaworld attendees on Tuesday. The deals are part of a series of planned partnerships aimed at giving Pega's clients choice in their cloud environment and avoiding lock-in. Pega last month inked an agreement to deliver Pega software on Pivotal Cloud Foundry.

Facebook last week signed agreements with several content firms -- among them Vox, Buzzfeed, ATTN and Group Nine Media, according to reports. The deals are widely viewed as part of the company's strategy to attract millennials to its live-streaming Web content. Facebook will offer multi-tiered programming, according to a report that cited sources familiar with the plans.

The Softbank Vision Fund has closed its first major funding round raising more than $93 billion in capital from the Gulf states, as well as tech stalwarts Apple, Qualcomm and others. Softbank, which last fall launched the fund with backing from the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, said it has received new commitments from the Mubadala Investment Fund from the United Arab Emirates.

Charter Spectrum has announced it will resell Comcast's Xfinity Mobile wireless service to customers inside its region. The good news is that this deal lets Charter get quick access to wireless without competing with Comcast. Comcast and Charter Communications last week said they had reached an "operational agreement" about working together.

CFOs have a new 800-pound gorilla sitting in the corner, as if they needed another one. Actually, the really lucky ones who oversee operations in Europe and the U.S. will have two. ASC 606 and IFRS 15 are new accounting rules that describe in great detail how subscription vendors should recognize revenue beginning in December 2018, and we should all care about them.

Twitter has announced a partnership with Bloomberg to launch a 24-hour streaming news service -- one of a dozen new content deals Twitter has entered to drive user engagement. CEO Jack Dorsey and a group of top executives announced the slate of programming agreements -- which include concerts from Live Nation, sports from Major League Baseball and the WNBA, and a morning news show from BuzzFeed.

Salesforce has entered an alliance with QuintilesIMS aimed at helping life sciences companies move treatments from clinical phases to commercial applications more effectively. QuintilesIMS, formed last year through the merger of healthcare data provider IMS Health and medical research firm Quintiles Transnational, is one of the world's largest integrated healthcare services companies.

Verizon on Monday confirmed reports that it will rebrand its AOL and Yahoo businesses under a new entity called "Oath." AOL CEO Tim Armstrong delivered the message via a tweet. The rebranding is part of a plan to reinvest millions into the legacy digital content companies with the aim of creating a major new platform. The "Yahoo" and "AOL" names will live on under the overarching Oath brand.

Imagination on Monday announced that Apple would no longer use its intellectual property, and the company's stock sank faster than a bottomless boat on the news. Apple planned to discontinue its use of the company's IP in new products in 15 months to two years, ending the companies' license and royalty agreement, Imagination said. Those royalties account for about half the company's revenue.

It's mud season here in New England -- that time of year when everything merges into an amorphous mess. The gray sky merges with a gray landscape made into slop by continual rains and dirty gray melting snow. It's hard to tell where one thing ends and another begins. Eventually the sun comes out and dries everything, the sky becomes distinct from the horizon, plants bloom, and order is restored.

Amazon has agreed to buy Souq.com, the leading online retailer in the Middle East, reportedly edging out rival Emaar Malls' $800 million offer. Terms of the agreement were not disclosed, but Amazon reportedly agreed to pay less for Souq than Emaar had offered. Souq, led by cofounder and CEO Ronaldo Mouchawar, claims to be the largest online retail and marketplace platform in the Arab world.

Marc Lore, CEO of Walmart eCommerce U.S., on Tuesday discussed the company's plans to launch a new venture, called "Store No. 8," which will operate as a Silicon Valley incubator for new online stores. The move reflects Walmart's ambition to catch up to Amazon in the e-commerce retail space. Lore unveiled the plans at the annual Shoptalk conference in Las Vegas.

Intel has agreed to acquire Mobileye, a developer of autonomous vehicle technology, for $15.3 billion. Intel will integrate Mobileye's computer vision and mapping technology for autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicles into its Automated Driving Group, to be led by MobileEye CTO Amnon Shashua. Intel SVP Doug Davis will oversee engagement across various Intel groups, and report directly to Shashua.

Data Science Community Kaggle will be joining Google Cloud, said Fei Fei Li, chief scientist of Google Cloud AI and machine learning, at last week's Google's Next '17 conference. The Kaggle community, which includes 800,000 data experts around the world, use the network to stay up to date on the latest innovations in data science and machine learning, according to Li.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise has inked a deal to acquire flash storage firm Nimble Storage, once viewed as a darling of Wall Street, for $12.50 a share in cash, or $1 billion. HPE also agreed to assume or pay out Nimble Storage's unvested equity awards, which are valued at $200 million. Upon completion of the deal, Nimble Storage will merge with a unit of HPE and become a subsidiary of the company.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and IBM CEO Ginni Rometty on Monday announced a global strategic partnership to deliver joint solutions leveraging artificial intelligence. Einstein, the AI that powers Salesforce applications, will be connected seamlessly with IBM's Watson AI platform. The integration is scheduled for availability in the second half, and pricing will be announced at that time.

HMD Global, owner of the Nokia phone brand, on Sunday reintroduced the classic 3310 feature phone at the MWC, along with a line of brand new Nokia smartphones that run on the Android platform. The relaunch of the 3310 is the reimagination of one of the world's best-selling feature phones as a sleek, lightweight device that features 22 hours of talk time and an entire month of standby time.

Verizon and Yahoo on Tuesday announced new terms for the acquisition deal they inked last summer. Verizon will pay $350 million less than the original contract price, which places the new value of the deal at $4.48 billion. Yahoo will be responsible for 50 percent of any breach-related cash liabilities incurred as a result of non-SEC government investigations and third-party litigation, under the new agreement.

Toshiba shares fell 8 percent on Tuesday as the company took a $6.3 billion writedown related to its struggling nuclear power business and delayed the release of its fiscal Q3 earnings. Shigenori Shiga, Toshiba's chairman and representative executive officer, resigned effective Wednesday. His resignation in part reflects management taking responsibility for the Westinghouse fiasco.

Apple has hired Tim Twerdahl, the former head of Amazon's Fire TV unit, in an effort to revive its struggling Apple TV business, which has been losing market share to rival streaming content services. Twerdahl reportedly joined Apple this month as VP in charge of product marketing for Apple TV, and the company shifted the unit's former head to a post responsible for negotiating content deals.

At least 127 United States companies -- including Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Google, Intel and other tech giants -- filed a friend of the court brief in a lawsuit the state of Washington brought against President Trump, which argues that his executive order to halt the entry of refugees and all travelers from seven Muslim nations would inflict significant harm on U. S. businesses.

The Partnership on AI has announced that Apple, well known for its culture of secrecy, has joined the organization as a founding member. The other founding members are Amazon, Facebook, Google/Deep Mind, IBM and Microsoft. The group also announced the final composition of its inaugural board of trustees. The group plans to announce additional details sometime after the board's Feb. 3 meeting.

Palmer Luckey on Wednesday denied that he stole proprietary code from ZeniMax Media, in the little-known company's blockbuster $2 billion lawsuit against Oculus VR and Facebook. ZeniMax has alleged that in 2012, when Luckey was just a video game enthusiast, he corresponded with John Carmack, who allegedly used proprietary hardware and software information to develop the Oculus Rift VR headset.

Yahoo has disclosed in an SEC filing that following the sale of its operating business to Verizon, the company will restructure its board and change its name. It also warned that a massive hack disclosed last year could imperil its $4.8 billion sale to Verizon. Yahoo will operate as an investment company after the Verizon deal closes, it reported in the filing.

Atlassian, the parent company behind the Jira enterprise tracking and HipChat communication apps, on Monday announced a deal to acquire Trello, the developer of a cloud-based collaboration app for enterprise teams and personal use. Atlassian will fork over $425 million-- $360 million in cash and the rest in stock. Trello provides software that includes digital whiteboards and virtual sticky notes.

Softbank has cut a check for $1 billion to OneWeb, which plans to build a constellation of satellites to provide Internet access to underserved parts of the world, the companies announced Monday. Helmed by satellite industry veteran Greg Wyler, OneWeb raised a total of $1.2 billion in its latest round of funding. The company will deploy 650 Ku band satellites into orbit at a height of 750 miles.

Yahoo has revealed that Net bandits stole data associated with 1 billion of its user accounts -- one of the largest data breaches in Internet history. The theft, which occurred in 2013, is distinct from the theft disclosed earlier this fall, in which 500 million accounts were compromised, Yahoo CISO Bob Lord explained. Stolen data may include names, email addresses, telephone numbers and more.

Microsoft last week closed its $26 billion acquisition of LinkedIn. LinkedIn will remain a separate company and Jeff Weiner will continue as its CEO, but he now reports to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Integration of the companies' products is under way. Among many other things, a user's LinkedIn identity and network will be made available in Microsoft Outlook and the Office suite.