One Thing Today in Tech

Technology investments by the world’s biggest companies will continue to grow despite the current global uncertainties, Rajesh Gopinathan, chief executive of Tata Consultancy Services , one of the world’s biggest IT services providers, writes in the company’s annual report for the fiscal year that ended on March 31. "The war in Ukraine, the geopolitical tensions in Europe, and the resultant impact...

SoftBank's Vision Funds lost more than $27 billion in the last fiscal year, by far their worst performance on record, CNN reports. CEO Masayoshi Son said he will now play defence and be more selective about investments. Google teased its Pixel watch at its I/O conference, planned for a launch around September. Sachin Bansal adds Vidit Aatrey to Navi’s board. And Ather has raised more money. Notes:...

Amazon and Walmart’s Flipkart unit are joining the country’s new Open Network for Digital Commerce, Economic Times reports. The network is being compared with India’s Unified Payments Interface, to support the idea that it could do for online commerce what UPI did for payments. And Uber, which is looking to cut costs in the US, is significantly and rapidly expanding its tech team in India. Notes:...

Apple is ending the iPod Touch, the last of the company’s series of music devices — including the iPod nano and the Shuffle — that changed how people listen to music forever. Google’s annual developer conference starts today. Delhivery gets strong interest from anchor investors ahead of IPO subscription. And Razorpay offers staff an ESOP buyback while bringing on new investors. Notes: Apple is end...

Apple’s director of machine learning, Ian Goodfellow, is leaving the company due to its return to work policy, according to a tweet by Zoe Schiffer, a tech reporter with The Verge. Ride-hailing network provider Uber’s CEO has promised cutbacks on spending, CNBC reports. And the global tech-led sell-off after US monetary tightening has hit cryptocurrencies as well, with Bitcoin losing more than hal...

Larsen & Toubro Infotech (LTI) and Mindtree will merge to form a larger IT services company that could be more capable of challenging bigger rivals for digital transformation contracts and global talent. LTI chief executive Sanjay Jalona is leaving and Mindtree’s boss Debashis Chatterjee is to lead the combined business. Notes: The combined entity is to be called LTIMindtree, the L&T group...

Apple, Google, and Microsoft plan to expand support for a common passwordless sign-in standard created by the FIDO Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium; IBM shareholders have urged the company to report on concealment clauses that prevent employees from discussing workplace wrongdoing. And Wipro and HFCL team up to make 5G routers. Apple, Google and Microsoft yesterday announced plans to exp...

Amazon yesterday said that cumulative exports by Indian exporters on the Amazon Global Selling programme are on track to surpass the $5 billion milestone. The company has doubled its exports pledge to facilitate $20 billion in cumulative exports from India by 2025. Intel acquires GPU tech company Siru Innovation. More global competition for Netflix in India. Notes: Amazon yesterday said that cumul...

A group of Apple employees, calling itself Apple Together, has opposed the company’s ‘hybrid working pilot’ return-to-office policy as a measure that actually kills flexibility, even diversity, and perpetuates a culture of working in silos. Google has sacked another AI researcher for questioning its science, NYT reports. And investors pour hundreds of millions more into Indian startups. Notes: A g...

ISMC, a semiconductor consortium, will invest Rs. 22,900 crore ($3 billion) in India's southern state of Karnataka to set up a chip-making plant, the state government said in a statement on Sunday. The plant is to come up on a 150-acre plot on the outskirts of the royal city of Mysuru, about three hours by car south of Bengaluru. ISMC is a joint venture between Abu Dhabi-based Next Orbit Ventures...

Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Meta Platforms, used her influence to bury two stories about her then-boyfriend, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, the Wall Street Journal reports. Google adds a ‘reject all’ option so users in the EU can reject all cookie tracking with one click. And HCL Tech, India’s third-biggest IT company, expects revenue growth of 12-14 percent for the current...

Mindtree and LTI, Mumbai-listed IT services companies that are part of the Larsen & Toubro group, are in advanced merger talks, according to Bloomberg and Economic Times. A merger plan may be announced as early as next week, Bloomberg reported on April 18. The companies have already been teaming up on larger contracts, Economic Times reported yesterday, citing Mindtree CEO Debashis Chatterjee....

Accenture has made a strategic investment, through Accenture Ventures, in Strivr, a provider of virtual reality-based, immersive learning and training solutions for enterprises, according to a press release . Santa Clara based Strivr has trained more than one million workers at some of the world’s largest companies using its proven, proprietary immersive learning platform. Strivr’s VR training pla...

Indian industry could reap benefits of up to $80 billion by participating in the global semiconductor manufacturing supply chain, by 2030, according to a report by the Indian Electronics and Semiconductor Manufacturing Association. And Wipro has recruited Satya Easwaran, a former Accenture and KPMG executive as its country head for India. Indian industry could reap benefits of up to $80 billion by...

Apple said last week that its suppliers more than doubled their use of clean power over the last year, with more than 10 gigawatts operational now, out of nearly 16 gigawatts in total commitments in the coming years. Twitter is fighting to thwart a hostile takeover after Elon Musk offered $43 billion for it. Plus, Infosys shares fell as much as 9 percent in early Mumbai trading after a fiscal Q4 r...

Infosys yesterday reported revenues increased by nearly 20 percent last fiscal year, the highest growth since the fiscal year 2010-11, and forecast growth of between 13 percent and 15 percent for the year that started this month. The rate at which people are leaving and switching jobs remains the biggest concern at a time of strong demand in the $227 billion IT services industry. Notes: Infosys ye...

Tata Consultancy Services reported the highest incremental revenue in the company’s history, for the fiscal year 2022. Revenues for the year ended March 31, 2022, rose $3.53 billion to $25.7 billion, a 15.4 percent increase over the previous fiscal year, in constant currency, TCS said in a statement yesterday after markets. Meanwhile, Wipro is doubling down on its acquisition strategy under CEO Th...

India will soon roll out new rules called the Digital India Act, which will be a “renewed policy for the digital ecosystem and cyberspace” in the country, Minister of State for Electronics and IT, Rajeev Chandrasekhar said over the weekend, Economic Times reports. Meanwhile, startups in the country received more than $10 billion in funding for the third straight quarter, Press Trust reports, citin...

Peter Kalmus, a NASA scientist who studies biological systems and climate change, and three others were arrested in Los Angeles on Wednesday after chaining themselves to the doors of a Chase Bank office building, Business Insider reports. JPMorgan Chase has invested more money in fossil fuels than any other bank, according to a 2020 report from the Sierra Club and other climate advocacy organisati...

VerSe Innovation, a local language technology platform company in Bengaluru, has raised $805 million in fresh funding, the company said in a press release. This investment follows the $650 million the company raised last year, taking the total capital raised in the past year to about $1.5 billion. The investment is said to have valued VerSe at $5 billion. Twitter has begun testing an edit button a...

Speciale Invest, a VC firm in Chennai that focuses on early-stage deep tech ventures in India, has announced the final close of its second fund at $38 million. The fund was oversubscribed twice over since the firm announced its first close in April last year. “This fund is 4X our first fund, and we are excited to play an active role in influencing the deep-tech entrepreneurial ecosystem in India,”...

Pixxel, a space-technology startup in Bengaluru, has launched its first commercial imaging satellite to space. The company launched its first full-fledged commercial satellite, named Shakuntala (Technology Demonstrator-2) onboard a SpaceX Falcon-9 rocket on April 1, according to a press release. Weighing less than 15 kg, Shakuntala (TD-2) is capable of capturing orbital images in more than 150 ban...

Roughly $625 million worth of cryptocurrency has been stolen from Ronin, the blockchain underlying the popular crypto game Axie Infinity, The Verge reports. A research team at Korea University has developed a software program that uses machine learning to determine the best way to treat soil with biochar, or thermally decomposed biowaste, to trap heavy metals. Plus, a raft of funding news. Notes:...

Apple plans to make about 20 percent fewer iPhone SEs next quarter than originally planned, in one of the first signs that the Ukraine war and looming inflation have started to dent consumer electronics demand, Nikkei Asia reports. HCL Technologies has been selected to provide global service desk and on-site support to Danish pharma company Novo Nordisk. Plus, Chalo, a bus-ride app provider, has a...

Elon Musk, the billionaire founder of Tesla and SpaceX, ranked “artificial intelligence going wrong” as one of the top three “existential threats” to humanity, Insider reports. The European Space Agency is funding a project called Camaliot to conduct scientific experiments on big data, collected from GPS receivers including smartphones. Plus, several Indian founders have banded up to start a pre-s...