*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).
Amazon will get a lot more than 3,000 brick-and-mortar stores when it builds out its cashierless Amazon Go chain.
The tech giant announced a slew of new products and software for Alexa-enabled homes, betting that the voice assistant becomes the entryway into the company's ecosystem for many households. Among the new Echo devices: a microwave, a wall clock, and the Echo Auto.
Thursday's IPO, with shares priced at $23 near the high end of its range, implied a valuation of nearly $1.8 billion. By midday, the stock was trading over $37. Julia Hartz, Eventbrite CEO, said the company's relentless focus on the "mid-market" protects it from competition from Ticketmaster or Facebook.
What does crypto have to do with journalism? Civil Media thinks it can be the answer to some of the field's woes, from eroding trust to a collapsing business model. As CEO Matthew Iles explained, the start-up's token sale can help build an infrastructure that will serve as a new economy for newsrooms.
Eventbrite, the online "do-it-yourself" ticketing agency, went public on the NYSE Thursday with shares priced at $23. By midday though, the stock, trading under the ticker EB, was at $37. The company's Chief Brand Officer Brian Irving joined Cheddar to discuss the debut.
The one-time Beatle is back at #1, and he didn't do it solely by selling albums. Austin Powell, managing editor at The Daily Dot, explains how McCartney was able to use the new music economy dominated by Spotify and Apple Music to his advantage.
The difference between the wild valuations and stock moves in the nascent pot industry and those of the turn-of-the-century dot-com stocks (Pets.com, anyone?) is that cannabis "is a market that actually exists," said financier Terry Taouss of cannabis financing company Tidal Royalty.
These are the headlines you Need 2 Know.
Naz Aletaha, head of esports partnerships for Riot Games, said that the "priceless" experiences with new global sponsor Mastercard will start with the world championships in October, offering premium content and behind the scenes access to the biggest event for esports lovers.
Raymond Wong, senior tech correspondent at Mashable, shares his thoughts on Apple's new iPhone XS, XS Max, and XR.
