Google announced a preview of Advanced API Security, a new product headed to Google Cloud that’s designed to detect security threats as they relate to APIs.
APIs have documented connections between computers or between computer programs. API usage is on the rise, with one survey finding that more than 61.6% of developers relied on APIs more in 2021 than in 2020.
But they’re also increasingly becoming the target of attacks.

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Elon Musk is unabashed about his obsession with manufacturing. Over the years, Tesla has gradually gained recognition in the manufacturing world by improving its production quality.
Industrial Next, founded by Allen Pan, who was Tesla’s autonomous factory lead at Fremont, and Lukas Pankau, who was a lead electrical architect behind Model X, Y and 3, aims to bring the latest production technologies to electric vehicle suppliers around the world, a vision that has helped it win investor support recently.
The startup just raised $12 million in a pre-Series A round led by Lenovo Capital, the venture capital vehicle of Chinese computer giant Lenovo, which owns IBM’s PC business. Xiaomi’s strategic investment arm and AlphaX Partners also participated in the financing round.

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Kune, a Kenyan food-tech startup that delivered ready-to-eat meals at affordable prices, is closing down,
CEO Robin Reecht cited a stifled economy and inflated food prices as circumstances that contributed to Kune’s closure.
The announcement comes just 4 months after the startup began its commercial operations at established meal centres around Nairobi.
Kenyans were aggrieved by his comments and did not hesitate to voice their critiques. They argued that Reecht’s ability to secure funding so quickly was due more to his white privilege than his business plan, which some believed aimed to solve a nonexistent problem.

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Telecommunications MTN has reportedly taken 18 Nigerian banks to court over a ₦22.3 billion mobile money fraud.
MTN is alleging that its recently-licensed mobile money Payment Service Bank, MoMo, has suffered a fraudulent loss from its partner banks.
MTN claims that the amount was transferred in error to 8,000 accounts maintained by the 18 banks’ customers.
Chief Executive Officer of MoMo PSB, Anthony Usoro Usoro, also claimed that the fraud was committed over a total of 700,000 transactions, over a one-month period.
The CEO also mentioned that it was resorting to legal action upon the banks’ insistence that only court orders could bring an action for reversal.

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Thepeer, a Nigerian tech infrastructure company that enables seamless wallet transfers between businesses, has raised a $2.1 million seed round.
Thepeer is an API-based company that enables its customers, majorly small and medium-sized businesses and fintech, to allow their own customers to fund their accounts from other businesses, send money across their different wallets, and pay for items from their wallets seamlessly.
Thepeer’s CEO Ononye says there is nearly 600 fintech across the continent, most of which operate siloed wallets.
He says their goal is to make it possible to connect and make payments from any wallet adding that they are building an operating system so that businesses can offer more services to their customers.

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The payment app, Abeg, has rebranded and will now be called PocketApp, a move that underlines its transition from a payment app to a social commerce app.
Abeg, a subsidiary of Piggytech Global Limited, secured approval-in-principle for a mobile money operator license application from the Central Bank of Nigeria to expand the scope of its social commerce operations across the country.
Piggytech Global co-founder and Chief Marketing Officer Joshua Chibueze says that PocketApp is trying to create a brand or an app that everyone can use.
PocketApp will support seamless payments and online commerce throughout the country by adding new functionalities for users to buy and sell items via virtual Pocket shops.

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Singapore-based crypto exchange Bybit has joined a long list of companies that have laid off some of their employees.
Crypto journalist James Wu says that the company is cutting a whopping 30% of its 2,000 people workforce however, the company didn’t give any indication about its workforce size or the number of people it has laid off.
Bybit says it has 6 million registered users with more than 190,000 users, who are trading futures or spots on the exchange daily.

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LeadSquared, a SaaS startup that is helping sales teams become more efficient with its CRM platform, is the latest Indian startup to become a unicorn.
LeadSquared says it has raised $153 million in a Series C funding round that valued it at $1 billion.
Existing backers including Gaja Capital also participated in the new funding, which takes the startup’s all-time raise to $188 million.
LeadSquared says its CRM platform takes away the guesswork from sales execution no matter how complex the customer journey.

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Swedish telecommunications equipment maker Ericsson says it expects global 5G mobile subscriptions to surpass a billion in 2022, helped by higher adoption in China and North America.
A weaker global economy and the uncertainties caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine lowered its estimate for 2022 by around 100 million.
Ericsson, which competes with China’s Huawei and Finland’s Nokia, is a leading supplier of mobile gear, including 5G.
5G subscriptions are estimated to reach 4.4 billion in 2027.
The growth in 4G users is expected to peak this year and then decline as subscribers migrate to 5G. Ericsson had earlier expected 4G subscriptions to peak last year.

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Telkom has launched two new mobile plans it hopes will energise interest among consumers.
Telkom Infinite offers unlimited data from R299/month.
Telkom revealed that it grew subscribers by 10.5% to 16.9 million at the end of March 2022, helping solidify its position as the number-three player in the market behind Vodacom and MTN and ahead of fourth-placed Cell C.
However, mobile revenue growth was just 6.3%, a figure Telkom warned it expects to moderate further, with future growth in line with its industry peers.

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