When we were selling enterprise software, we had to go through procurement ourselves and saw how manual and fragmented the process still is. Even with modern eProcurement software, most of the real work is still done manually. Companies are left to build large internal teams or outsource this work, resulting in a slow, expensive process.
Because startups typically don't have a track record of success to attract potential clients, they can offer a trial of their platform for free or at a lower cost to showcase what their platform can do and how reliable it is. The enterprise - a potential client - can test the newest technologies without the worry of committing to a complete and often costly rollout.
Microsoft has launched Microsoft Marketplace, a unified storefront website for AI apps, agents, and enterprise solutions to boost AI adoption. Unveiled September 25, the marketplace is intended for scenarios where the adoption of AI agents requires a mix of in-house and third-party tools. The marketplace offers a secure, scalable mechanism for customers to try out and buy solutions, whether on the web or directly within Microsoft products, according to the company.
Chinese startup DeepSeek has released its largest AI model to date, a 685-billion-parameter model that industry observers say could intensify competition with US players. The model, called DeepSeek V3.1, was made available on the open-source platform Hugging Face this week with little publicity. Despite the quiet rollout, early benchmark results reportedly suggest the model performs on par with proprietary offerings from OpenAI and Anthropic.