Hola,

Non-essential retail stores have been hit hard by the pandemic, and apparel in particular has struggled with store closures.

For consumers, it's difficult to imagine going back to the experience of browsing alongside other shoppers and trying on clothes that others might have touched. Competition from online is fierce: Online fashion has been a popular investment area for top VCs in recent years, as our latest Smart Money analysis showed. 

One vision for luring wary shoppers back to physical stores, detailed in some of our recent client research, is for an apparel experience geared around contactless shopping.

Gimme, gimme more AI

From cancer detection to remote monitoring, Covid-19 has highlighted AI's potential in healthcare.

Expert Intelligence clients can see 100+ startups transforming healthcare here.

Words of wisdom

The CB Insights Technology Conference (June 16-18) brings together the smartest people we know to offer their wisdom on what’s next at the intersection of business, technology, and work.
 

Some of the speakers folks are most excited about include:

• Henry Kravis, Co-chairman and Co-CEO, KKR 
• Scott Galloway, Founder, Section4 (Author of NYT bestseller "The Four")
• Fred Wilson, Co-founder and Partner, Union Square Ventures (early investor in Twitter, Coinbase, Zynga, and Etsy)

Prices go up tomorrow. Register here.

Inspired by Clueless
 

From contactless checkout to virtual try-ons, here are the technologies and trends that could help bring retail stores into the future.

I drove all night 

Amazon is reportedly in talks to buy self-driving co Zoox. 

We highlight what else Amazon is doing in autonomous driving — as well as other corporations investing in driverless tech in this report.

Pick 'em

With Covid-19 in the spotlight, how is big tech betting on healthcare?  

CB Insights healthcare analyst He Wang will dig into how FAMGA is forming strategies, investments, and partnerships, and walk through our recent Big Tech In Healthcare report in our upcoming briefing on June 9. 

From rapid diagnostics to infection tracking to drug R&D, AI has emerged as a crucial tool in the fight against Covid-19.

Using our earnings call mentions tool, we can track  how AI has become intertwined with corporate responses to Covid-19.

Key insights from these earnings calls include:

• Bob Swan, CEO of Intel: “AI has the power to reimagine how we solve problems across industries, [...] in China, Intel teams with Lenovo and BGI Genomics to accelerate the analysis of genomic characteristics of COVID-19.”

• Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft: Microsoft is using AI to “speed up response from testing to therapeutics and vaccine development.”

• Juan Lin, director of investor relations, Baidu: Baidu “leveraged [its] facial recognition and other AI technology to deploy fever screening systems to railway stations, hospitals and municipal buildings across China.”

 Clients can tweak the search terms to look at earnings call mentions of any other industry or technology alongside Covid-19.

For more, take a look at our Healthcare AI In Numbers Q1’20  report, as well as all of our Covid-19-specific research on AI.

Have a great rest of the week.

P.S. If you missed it, this is where the world’s top VCs are investing in retail and consumer goods.

P.P.S. Submit your company here for the Fintech 250 before applications close on June 19.