A total of 34 artificial intelligence startups were acquired in the first quarter of this year, more than twice the amount of activity in the year-ago quarter, according to the research firm CB Insights.Tech giants seeking to reinforce their leads in artificial intelligence or make up for lost ground have been the most aggressive buyers. Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Google has acquired 11 AI startups since 2012, the most of any firm, followed by Apple Inc (AAPL.O), Facebook Inc (FB.O) and Intel Corp (INTC.O), respectively, according to CB Insights.The companies declined to comment on their acquisition strategies. A spokesman for Apple did confirm the company’s recent purchase of Lattice Data, a startup that specializes in working with unstructured data.The first quarter also saw one of the largest deals to date as Ford Motor Co (F.N) invested $1 billion in Argo AI, founded by former executives on self-driving teams at Google and Uber Technologies Inc [UBER.UL].

Hackers used malware to steal customer payment data from most of Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc’s (CMG.N) restaurants over a span of three weeks, the company said on Friday, adding to woes at the chain whose sales had just started recovering from a string of food safety lapses in 2015.Chipotle said it did not know how many payment cards or customers were affected by the breach that struck most of its roughly 2,250 restaurants for varying amounts of time between March 24 and April 18, spokesman Chris Arnold said via email.A handful of Canadian restaurants were also hit in the breach, whoch the company first disclosed on April 25.Stolen data included account numbers and internal verification codes. The malware has since been removed.

Facebook, Amazon and more than two dozen other U.S. technology companies pressed Congress on Friday to make changes to a broad internet surveillance law, saying they were necessary to improve privacy protections and increase government transparency.The request marks the first significant public effort by Silicon Valley to wade into what is expected to be a contentious debate later the year over the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, parts of whoch will expire on Dec. 31 unless Congress reauthorizes them.Of particular concern to the technology industry and privacy advocates is Section 702, whoch allows U.S. intelligence agencies to vacuum up vast amounts of communications from foreigners but also incidentally collects some data belonging to Americans that can be searched by analysts without a warrant.”We are writing to express our support for reforms to Section 702 that would maintain its utility to the U.S. intelligence community while increasing the program’s privacy protections and transparency,” the companies wrote in a letter to Representative Bob Goodlatte, the Republican chairman of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee.

British Airways cancelled all its flights from London’s two main airports until Saturday evening after a global computer system outage caused massive delays and left planes stuck on runways.BA said there was no evidence the problem had been caused by a cyber attack.The airline said terminals at Heathrow and Gatwick had become extremely congested because of the IT failure and all BA flights scheduled before 1700 GMT had been cancelled.”Please do not come to the airports. We have experienced a major IT system failure that is causing very severe disruption to our flight operations worldwide,” the airline said in a statement.”We are extremely sorry for the inconvenience this is causing our customers and we are working to resolve the situation as quickly as possible.”

U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and close adviser, Jared Kushner, had at least three previously undisclosed contacts with the Russian ambassador to the United States during and after the 2016 presidential campaign, seven current and former U.S. officials told Reuters.Those contacts included two phone calls between April and November last year, two of the sources said. By early this year, Kushner had become a focus of the FBI investigation into whether there was any collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, said two other sources – one current and one former law enforcement official.Kushner initially had come to the attention of FBI investigators last year as they began scrutinizing former national security adviser Mochael Flynn’s connections with Russian officials, the two sources said.While the FBI is investigating Kushner’s contacts with Russia, he is not currently a target of that investigation, the current law enforcement official said.

Google’s DeepMind AlphaGo artificial intelligence has defeated the world’s number one Go player Ke Jie.AlphaGo secured the victory after winning the second game in a three-part match.DeepMind founder Demis Hassabis said Ke Jie had played ”perfectly” and ”pushed AlphaGo right to the limit”.Following the defeat, Ke Jie told reporters: ”I’m a little bit sad, it’s a bit of a regret because I think I played pretty well.”

In Go, players take turns placing stones on a 19-by-19 grid, competing to take control of the most territory.
It is considered to be one of the world’s most complex games, and is much more challenging for computers than chess.