One Thing Today in Tech

Microsoft and Google both surprised the street yesterday, beating analysts’ estimates. Google also saw its cloud business turn a profit for the first time since the unit’s launch. Also in this brief, Microsoft’s Anant Maheshwari is named Nasscom chair; WhatsApp can now be used on multiple phones; Xerox to donate PARC to SRI; and Capria Ventures announced the first close of its second fund, which h...

Apple opens its second company-owned retail store in India today, in New Delhi. CEO Tim Cook who’s visiting India after seven years, shared a picture on Twitter from a meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi yesterday and said the company is committed to the country’s tech vision. Also in this brief, JLR is to invest $15.7 billion more in its EV plan over the next five years. Wipro follows LTIMi...

Elon Musk, once a large backer of OpenAI, is planning to launch an artificial intelligence startup of his own, CNBC reports, citing an article in the Financial Times from Friday last that is behind a paywall. The company is called X.ai, according to the Wall Street Journal, which also reported the news, citing a filing in the US state of Nevada. Musk is listed as a director of the new company, acc...

Tata Consultancy Services kicked off the Indian IT services sector’s fiscal fourth-quarter earnings yesterday, reporting that clients in the US, the sector’s biggest market, were holding back on discretionary spending and that an expected pickup from the previous quarter didn’t materialise. Growth was led by a strong performance in the UK, and the company ended the fiscal year 2023 with 6,14,795 e...

Apple, after years of anticipation, is finally ready to open its own stores in India. The first two are coming up in Mumbai and New Delhi. They are set to open on April 18 and April 20, respectively. China’s powerful Cyberspace Administration has released draft rules to regulate generative AI products as companies such as Alibaba and Baidu launched their rival products to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, CNBC re...

Worldwide IT spending is projected to touch $4.6 trillion in 2023, increasing by 5.5 percent over 2022, according to the latest forecast by Gartner, widely seen as the top IT market forecaster advising enterprise CIOs. While the devices segment is expected to contract the most among the various categories, the IT services segment is now expected to grow faster. Gartner forecasts IT services spendi...

India yesterday notified changes to its information technology rules that now require all intermediaries – such as social media platform providers and internet services providers – to rely on a government-backed fact check unit concerning any content related to “government business,” according to an official statement. Also in this brief, Q1 of calendar 2023 saw startup funding continue to fall, a...

Capillary Technologies, one of India’s first-generation software-as-a-service companies, earlier this week, announced its second US acquisition as part of a strategy to step up its operations in the world’s biggest technology market. Speciale Invest, a Chennai VC firm known for backing deep-tech startups, has raised a fund aimed at series A or higher. And Infosys wins a contract that extends its 1...

India’s Skyroot Aerospace, yesterday announced it had conducted a long-duration test of a 3D-printed cryogenic engine, firing it for 200 seconds – an important milestone in developing the private space venture’s higher payload capacity rockets. The test also yielded vital data for advancing the company’s use of LNG – a greener alternative to the more widely used fuels today, the company said in a...

Tata Consultancy Services, India’s biggest technology services and consulting company, announced a surprise change at the top yesterday. CEO Rajesh Gopinathan has resigned to “pursue his other interests,” and K Krithivasan, another company veteran will take over in the coming months, the Mumbai-listed IT giant told the stock exchanges after the markets closed. Also in this brief, Xoriant, an engin...

Venture capital funding for India’s startups fell from $38.5 billion in 2021 to $25.7 billion in 2022, according to the latest report on the sector by Bain and Company, a consultancy, and Indian Venture and Alternate Capital Association. However, more early-stage deals were struck in 2022, helping the overall deal volume to be marginally higher, according to the report, released yesterday. Also in...

Facebook’s parent company Meta Platforms will lay off 10,000 more workers and incur restructuring costs ranging from $3 billion to $5 billion, the company announced Tuesday, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg warning economic instability could continue for “many years,” CNBC reports. Also in this brief, OpenAI releases GPT-4, the latest version of its large language model AI; and Infosys sees a second big e...

The year 2022 saw women-led startups in India increase their share of venture capital investments and do better than the overall startup ecosystem in the country, even as the so-called funding winter descended on the sector amid worsening global macroeconomic conditions. Marquee investors such as Sequoia Capital and Accel as well as accelerators and incubators such as CIIE backed more women entrep...

Foxconn, one of Apple’s largest contract manufacturers, said on Saturday that there was no definitive agreement about investment in India, the French news agency AFP reported. This came after a report from Bloomberg on Friday last that Foxconn will invest about $700 million to build a new plant near India’s tech capital Bengaluru. Also in this brief, Universal Hydrogen, a hydrogen fuel cell techno...

Amazon announced on February 24 that it will integrate its logistics network and SmartCommerce, a suite of SaaS products built on Amazon Web Services, with the government of India-backed Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC). Ericsson has announced the largest layoff in the telecom sector in the current economic slowdown, Reuters reports. Also in this brief, Nokia has announced the G22 – a smar...

Google has started to support third-party billing for Google Play Store purchases in India as the Android maker begins to comply with local rules, after its challenge to a diktat from India’s Competition Commission was initially rejected by the country’s top courts, but remains pending, TechCrunch reports. Meanwhile, C.E. Info Systems, better known for its geospatial software tech products under t...

India and Singapore have linked their digital payments systems, UPI and PayNow, to support instant and low-cost cross-border payments. The system went live yesterday. Capgemini forecast weaker revenue growth and said it would slow down hiring in 2023 amid a global economic slowdown, Reuters reports. Meanwhile, Wipro is asking some recruits to join at lower pay, according to Economic Times. Also in...

Tata Group’s Jaguar Land Rover said on Tuesday it is opening three new engineering hubs in Europe to develop autonomous vehicle technologies as part of its partnership with Silicon Valley artificial intelligence company Nvidia, Reuters reports. Also in this brief, several countries, last week, agreed on a call to action over the use of AI in warfare; and Freshworks, yesterday, named Sandie Overtve...

Microsoft’s announcement of its Bing AI last week was received with much fanfare, which even prompted Google to rush through its botched announcement. The experience of some early testers, however, hasn’t been very good, and the whole thing could backfire. Also in this brief, Tesla is recalling more than 360,000 cars over safety concerns related to its driver-assistance software. And scientists in...

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff took a vacation to French Polynesia to “detox” himself from gadgets and other digital distractions, the entrepreneur told The New York Times, Business Insider reports – the original piece is behind a paywall. Benioff took a vacation after firing 10 percent of the cloud-based CRM provider’s staff. Meanwhile, fintech darling Stripe burned through half a billion dollars in...

Blue Origin, the aerospace company started by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has developed the technologies needed to make solar panels on the Moon, with zero carbon emissions and no water, the company said in a blog post on Friday last. Twilio, yesterday, announced plans to cut another 17 percent of its workforce or roughly 1,500 jobs, CNBC reports. Also in this brief, Apple, earlier today, released...

Shell’s board of directors are being personally sued over their alleged failure to properly manage risks associated with the climate crisis, Euronews reports. The lawsuit, brought by Environmental law charity ClientEarth says the British oil giant’s 11 directors have breached their legal duties under the UK’s Companies Act by failing to bring their climate strategy in line with the Paris Agreement...

Microsoft has re-launched its search engine Bing with artificial intelligence features, the company said in a blog post yesterday. The new search engine is available for preview at bing.com. Microsoft is a large investor in Open AI, the research lab and company whose ChatGPT bot has taken the tech world by storm for its ability to deliver human-like responses. After losing the mobile operating sys...

The naval version of India’s light combat aircraft made a successful landing on the INS Vikrant, India’s indigenous aircraft carrier, the ministry of defence said in a press release yesterday. Separately, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, yesterday, opened India’s largest helicopter factory at Tumakuru, near Bengaluru. The facility, established by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, will initially make lig...

As India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presents the country’s budget today for the coming fiscal year that starts April 1, expectations are high on all fronts, especially as India is widely seen as the one major economy that will grow strongly during a period when the global economy is expected to slow down. Here’s what some of India’s tech startups and VC investors have on their wish list...