Feds Investigating iRobot Competitors | Inside Fuze's New Boston HQ

Dylan: Our Artificial Intelligence in Boston series has come to an end. That doesn't mean we'll stop writing about cool AI things happening in the area. That said, we have gotten a lot of inbound interest for more AI stories, so we have decided to hold another week of #AIinBoston this September. Expect series in other categories as well. Thanks for all your support!

Lucy: It's official: the Forbes Under 30 Summit is coming back to Boston for a second year. The four-day event will run Oct. 1-4, and one of the biggest returning speakers is actor and venture capitalist Ashton Kutcher.

Dylan: But if you're not an Old Media person, I have good news for you New Media folks: at least three YouTube "influencers" have been signed on as speakers. They include Lilly Singh, a comedian who has 11M subscribers on YouTube and was ranked as the third highest-paid YouTube star in the world, making a reported $6.5M in 2016.

Other non-YouTuber speakers include Guy Oseary, who runs VC firm Sound Ventures with Kutcher; hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones; and Cisco Systems Executive Chairman John Chambers. 

The event will take place at multiple venues across the city. That includes City Hall Plaza, which will serve as the event's central hub that will include a pop-up beer garden, performances, and demonstrations. The event will also include a number of panels coverings topics like tech and healthcare, a new Women@Forbes Under 30 event at MIT, and festivals for music and food.

Lucy: One other cool thing to point out: Forbes will be giving free passes and "lodging assistance" to 1,000 individuals from "diverse backgrounds who are underrepresented in tech and finance." As a frame of reference, general admission costs $325 (early bird price), with premium tickets costing up to $1,000. Read more: Forbes Under 30 Summit Returns to Boston with Ashton Kutcher & Some YouTubers

Dylan: Lola Travel, the startup founded by Kayak co-founder Paul English, is pivoting away from the consumer world and will now focus on the business travel space, English announced this week. A company spokeswoman said there is no information yet on when Lola will discontinue its consumer app, which provides a concierge-like travel booking service with human agents.

In a Medium post, English said the decision was made after noticing that a high concentration of business travelers were using the app. "Traveling for business is tough. It’s disruptive, rarely goes smoothly and requires a lot of coordination and organization. We believe there is a huge opportunity in the marketplace to bring simplicity to the complexity of business travel and maybe even a little bit of joy along the way," English said.

Lola has raised nearly $45M from CRV, General Catalyst, Accel Partners, GVand Tenaya Capital.

Lucy: For our Office Envy series, I went to take a look at Fuze’s new Boston HQ in Copley Square. The company moved here from Cambridge on Monday: currently, it occupies the 6th and the 7th floor of Copley Place. Fun Fact No. 1: The offices are named after sandwiches, so there are common rooms named Falafel, Turkey Club or Lobster Roll. Fun Fact No. 2: The table in the waiting area is an old logo of Fuze, when the company was still named Thinking Phone Networks. The new office accommodates 306 employees. I included my best pics in the article. Read more: Office Envy: Inside Fuze’s New Boston Hub, Where Offices Are Named After Sandwiches 

Dylan: After filing a complaint last month, iRobot said the U.S. International Trade Commission is investigating alleged patent infringement by several companies that make vacuums, including Hoover, Black & Decker andBissell Homecare. The Bedford-based Roomba maker alleges that the companies infringed upon six of its patents.

Dylan: In Scott Kirsner's new Boston Globe piece on startups building smarter furniture, he noted that Soofa, which builds smart benches that let you charge your phone, raised $2.5M from Pillar and Underscore.VC earlier this month. Soofa is also making a solar-powered information display for bus and train arrival times and upcoming events.

Dylan: Got a few personnel moves to report:

-- The city of Boston's first-ever chief digital officer, Lauren Lockwood, is leaving for Philadelphia.

-- Alignable has hired Ryan Kelleher as director of product design and Brandon Shar as a senior software engineer. Kelleher was previously a creative director at CSC. Shar was previously at IAM Robotics.

-- Endurance International Group, which owns Constant Contact, has appointed Marc Montagner as interim COO. He will continue to serve as CFO. Ron LaSalvia, now president of hosting brands at Endurance, ended his role as COO in February. The company also hired Allen M. Chaves Jr. as its CTO. Chaves was previously chief software architect for Ultimate Software.

Dylan: Happening this Monday is the first Inclusive Innovation Conference, which is being run by Melissa James, founder of Tech Connection founder and co-founder of Hack.Diversity. Speakers include Jules Pieri of The Grommet, Anthony Williams of Akamai, Corey Thomas of Rapid7 and Wayne Chang of Crashlytics. Find more events in BostInno Approved.