*By Jacqueline Corba*
Salesforce has saved a seat at its executive meetings for Einstein, an artificial intelligence-powered robot developed by the cloud computing company.
"The fact that we are using our own products to really drive our forecasting, it's pretty amazing," said Bob Stutz, CEO of Salesforce's Marketing Cloud. "It is really great to have that tool that you can use every single day to run your business."
Salesforce's chief executive, Marc Benioff, has been an outspoken proponent of the company's use of A.I., and said that Einstein has [been at every weekly senior staff meeting](http://fortune.com/2018/01/25/salesforce-benioff-einstein-davos-ai/) for the last year.
Stutz said Einstein pulls his weight on a team that has grown its quarterly revenue by 41 percent year over year.
"We are on an incredible tear right now," Stutz said in an interview with Cheddar. "It's really helping customers connect with their consumers across sales, marketing, service ー it's a real growth driver for us nowadays."
For the full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/inside-salesforce-marketing-cloud-growth).
Despite losing a significant amount in market cap after reporting platform revenue earnings that fell short of Wall Street estimates, Roku CEO Anthony Wood said he isn't worried about the company's long-term prospects. "Our business is just fundamentally strong," Wood said Thursday in an interview on Cheddar.
Americans seem to agree on at least one thing: no one likes a traffic jam — and congestion is at its all-time worst. Transportation was a prominent subject of this year's midterm elections. Election Day hosted over 300 transportation and infrastructure initiatives on the ballot, and on both the state and local levels, a number of newly-elected officials are now faced with the task of shaping that legislation and policy.
Bitmain’s Vice President of BTC.com, Alejandro De La Torre, addressed many of the controversies confronting the world's largest crypto mining company in a rare interview with Cheddar. He also said Bitmain is observing more people mining, even as the price of Bitcoin has decreased.
Gillian Tans, the CEO of Booking.com, spoke with Cheddar's Alex Heath at the Web Summit about how the the platform known for hotel deals is transitioning into a full service travel concierge.
Disney's new streaming service and its acquisition of Fox assets will be the main fixation when the entertainment giant reports earnings and revenue after market close on Thursday.
Elon Musk will have someone to answer to at Tesla. The electric carmaker announced late Wednesday that Robyn Denholm would take Musk's place as chair of the board. Denholm, a Tesla board member, will leave her job as chief financial officer of Telstra, an Australian telco giant and inherit Musk's chairman duties full-time in six months when her notice period is complete.
Ford, the century-old automaker that all but invented the concept of the modern car, said it would acquire e-scooter start-up Spin as part of a broad re-positioning of the company as a mobility services provider in an era when car ownership is but one of many options for getting around. Cheddar discussed the strategy behind the acquisition with Sunny Madra, the vice president of tech incubator Ford X, and Euwyn Poon, the co-founder and president of Spin.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know.
Adrian Lovett, president and CEO of the non-profit Web Foundation, told Cheddar's Alex Heath why the rate of people getting online for the first time is becoming stagnant.
Services aren't just for tech companies ー retailers are also latching onto the recurring revenue trend. And for industry vet Office Depot, the services model promises serious growth. "We are not a retailer, we are an omni-channel company," Office Depot CEO Gerry Smith told Cheddar, underscoring the importance of services revenue and Office Depot's business-to-business division.
