One Thing Today in Tech

After Elon Musk’s tweet that he has found a new CEO for Twitter and that he would take the CTO’s role, the name of Linda Yaccarino, a senior executive at NBC Universal Media in the US, has emerged as the person who is tipped to lead Twitter. In today’s Quick Take, we talk about if this will have any bearing on Twitter’s plans in India and how Yaccarino, a top marketer, might bring her perspective to one of the world’s biggest social media platforms. Twitter with its strong tech underpinnings, also has a vibrant base of users among India’s startup entrepreneurs.

Hyundai Motor has pledged to invest $2.45 billion in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu over the next decade to boost its electric vehicle plans, according to multiple reports yesterday. WhatsApp has rolled out back-end updates to address the surge in spam calls, which have been a major problem for users in India. Also in this brief, Julia programming language’s version 1.9 is out, and Google has launched its latest budget smartphone, the Pixel 7a, in India at a price of Rs43,999, TechCrunch reports.

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Hyundai Motor has pledged to invest $2.45bn in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu over the next decade to boost its electric vehicle (EV) plans, according to multiple reports yesterday.

The South Korean automaker signed an agreement with the state government of Tamil Nadu to increase production capacity at its Sriperumbudur plant and assemble EV battery packs, as well as to install 100 charging stations across the state in the next five years.

Hyundai Motor India's managing director said the long-term investment would enhance manufacturing capabilities and increase production volumes to create the best EVs and internal combustion engines in Tamil Nadu for the rest of the world. Tamil Nadu currently accounts for almost 6 percent of all EVs manufactured in India, according to the state's industries minister.

WhatsApp has rolled out back-end updates to address the surge in spam calls, which have been a major problem for users in India. The messaging app, owned by Meta, has bolstered its AI and ML systems to counter the issue, which has led to widespread reports of harassment and scams through fraudulent calls from unknown international numbers.

The new measures are expected to reduce spam calls by at least 50 percent, the company said in an emailed statement yesterday.

Julia, the popular programming language for scientific data analysis, has released a new upgrade, version 1.9, that eliminates the issue of slow start-up times for complex packages, according to a press release from JuliaHub yesterday.

The update allows Julia to generate and save machine code for packages when they are installed, which Julia reuses every time it is launched, making it much snappier for day-to-day usage. Core contributors to the new version include JuliaHub, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, among others.

Julia is open source and free to download and is rapidly being adopted by scientists doing exploratory data analysis. It is also used in the pharmaceutical industry for modelling drug interactions and vaccine dosing, among other applications.

Google has launched its latest budget smartphone, the Pixel 7a, in India at a price of ₹43,999 ($536), TechCrunch reports. While this is not an affordable price for the Indian market, it is closer to the US price of $499 (₹40,937).

The company will also continue to sell the Pixel 6a in India with a reduced price tag of ₹29,999 (~$365) to make it more affordable for customers. Despite marketing efforts, Google has yet to capture any significant market share in India, which saw 144 million smartphone shipments last year.

However, the company has already shipped more than 175,000 devices in Q1 2023, largely thanks to the Pixel 6a. Google will face stiff competition from rivals such as Nothing, OnePlus, Vivo, and Xiaomi, who sell multiple models in the $300-$500 range.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai, yesterday, delivered the keynote address at the 2023 edition of its annual flagship conference, Google I/O, highlighting the company's latest advancements in AI and machine learning. The company is bringing its technology in generative AI to individual users through a new Labs project. Separately, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian provided an update on how the company is bringing generative AI tech to the enterprise user. On the personal tech front, Google announced three new devices, including the next Pixel phone, a foldable phone and a new tablet.

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Google CEO Sundar Pichai, yesterday, delivered the keynote address at the 2023 edition of its annual flagship conference, Google I/O, highlighting the company's latest advancements in AI and machine learning.

“Seven years into our journey as an AI-first company, we’re at an exciting inflection point. We have an opportunity to make AI even more helpful for people, for businesses, for communities, for everyone,” Pichai said.

“We’ve been applying AI to make our products radically more helpful for a while. With generative AI, we’re taking the next step … we’re reimagining all our core products, including Search,” he added.

Google has announced the launch of "Labs", a program that will allow users to preview some of their experiences across Workspace and other products. One of the first experiences available to test in Labs will involve Google Search.

As part of Labs, Google is introducing a new Search Generative Experience that combines the company's deep understanding of information with the unique capabilities of generative AI to transform how Search works.

On the large language models front, Google has announced the release of PaLM 2, its latest natural language processing (NLP) model. PaLM 2 builds on its predecessor, PaLM, and boasts multilingual capabilities, strength in logic and reasoning, and the ability to be fine-tuned for specific domains.

PaLM 2 is the latest product in Google's effort to bring AI to billions of people safely and responsibly. PaLM 2 was developed by two world-class research teams, the Brain Team and DeepMind, which have contributed to significant AI breakthroughs in the past, such as AlphaGo and Transformers. The two teams have recently been brought together into a single unit, Google DeepMind, which is working on Gemini, its next-generation foundation model.

Gemini is designed to be multimodal, efficient at the tool and API integrations, and capable of enabling future innovations like memory and planning. Once rigorously tested for safety, Gemini will be available in various sizes and capabilities, just like PaLM 2.

In a separate blog post, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian wrote about how the company is bringing generative AI capabilities to help users of all skill levels solve everyday work challenges.

Google Cloud has introduced new foundation models and capabilities across its AI products. Codey accelerates software development with code generation, while Imagen generates and customizes studio-grade images. Chirp enables deeper engagement with customers and constituents in their native languages.

The company also released three new Android hardware devices in its Pixel line of products.

Researchers at OpenAI, the company that made ChatGPT, have open-sourced datasets from a nascent effort aimed at building an automated tool to explain how large language models work. They discussed their efforts in a paper they published yesterday on their website. IBM, at its annual think conference yesterday released a new AI platform and tools. And for fans of the Nintendo Switch, the eponymous company’s latest results won’t bring any cheer. Sales of the hand-held console have dropped, dimming the prospect of an update to the product.

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IBM has launched Watsonx, an AI and data platform aimed at helping enterprises deploy AI models quickly and cost-effectively. The platform will provide businesses with a full technology stack for training, tuning, and deploying AI models, including IBM-curated and trained foundation models and machine learning capabilities.

IBM Watsonx.ai and IBM Watsonx.data will offer an AI development studio with foundation models, tools for training and tuning, and a data store for training and tuning data, and an optimized data store built on open lakehouse architecture optimized for governed data and AI workloads. The platform will be available from July 2023.

OpenAI researchers have proposed an automated approach to producing natural language explanations of individual components, including neurons and attention heads, in neural networks.

The proposed method uses GPT-4 to generate and score explanations of neuron behaviour. The authors are open-sourcing their datasets and visualization tools for GPT-4 written explanations, with hopes that the research community will develop new techniques for generating higher-scoring explanations and better tools for exploring language models.

Nintendo has reported a 5.5 percent YoY decrease in revenue for its fiscal year, with the 22 percent fall in sales of its flagship Switch console contributing to the decline.

Net profit fell by more than 9 percent to JPY432.7bn. Nintendo sold 17.97 million Switch units, in line with its forecast, compared with 23 million the previous year. The company has cited a shortage of semiconductors and other components as affecting production.

Zyngo EV Mobility, a Gurugram-based logistics service provider, has raised $5m in pre-Series A funding led by Delta Corp Holdings, with participation from LC Nueva Investment Partners.

Zyngo offers last-mile delivery solutions through a fleet of electric vehicles, targeting B2B and B2C customers, with a unique "asset-light model" acting as an intermediary between supply and demand in the market. The company aims to deploy 18,000+ zero-emission EV fleets across India by 2025 and intends to launch a hyperlocal B2C delivery mobile app.

Realme has launched the realme C55 Rainforest edition, a smartphone with a green hue meant to evoke the essence of a rainforest. The phone is powered by MediaTek Helio G88 Chipset and has a 17.07cm (6.72'') 90Hz FHD+ display, the largest in this price segment. The realme C55 also has ‘Mini Capsule’ and Sunshower design features, and up to 16GB of dynamic RAM.

LinkedIn is cutting 716 jobs,  about  3.6 percent of its staff, to streamline its operations. The social media network for business professionals will also phase out its local jobs app in China, InCareers. Google is expected to announce several generative AI updates at its annual developer conference, tomorrow, including the launch of a general-use large language model called PaLM 2, which incorporates over 100 languages and has been operating under the internal codename “Unified Language Model”, CNBC reports. And Razorpay is moving its legal base back to India, ET reports.

Tata Steel has warned that its UK business faces “material uncertainty” due to market conditions and the level of government support, BBC reports. That support is related to the need for the company’s steel factories to transition to newer technologies and processes that will result in lowering carbon emissions from the plants. Bengaluru VC firm 3One4 Capital has raised $200 million for its fourth fund, TechCrunch reports. The company has garnered half the commitment from local investors, according to the report.

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Tata Steel's UK business faces "material uncertainty" due to market conditions and the level of government support needed for decarbonisation, according to a stress test carried out on the European arm of the company, the BBC reports.

Tata Steel UK, which employs approximately 8,000 people, expects trading to improve later this year. Reports suggest Tata Steel could receive £300m ($405m) in support but decarbonising the Port Talbot plant is estimated to cost up to £3bn. The UK government says it is providing support to protect the steel industry from "unfair trade and energy costs".

Westinghouse has launched a smaller version of its AP1000 nuclear reactor, called AP300, which will generate around 300MW, enough to power 300,000 homes, CNBC reports.

The move comes as the nuclear industry looks to remake itself as a means of addressing climate change. The electricity produced by nuclear fission reactors generates no greenhouse gas emissions, and smaller nuclear reactors are less expensive to build. The AP300 will cost around $1bn per unit, compared with around $6.8bn for an AP1000. The UK's Nuclear Regulatory Commission will need to give its approval before the AP300 becomes available to customers by the end of 2027.

The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is investigating Adobe's $20bn acquisition of Figma to determine if it will lessen competition in the country, Reuters reports.

The move comes after the CMA blocked Microsoft's $69bn acquisition of Activision Blizzard over concerns that it would hinder cloud gaming. Adobe has said it looks forward to continuing to engage with the CMA, US Department of Justice, and European Commission in productive discussions about the deal. Figma has stated it will continue to engage constructively with regulators in the UK.

US chipmaker Broadcom's CEO, Hock Tan, has met European Union antitrust regulators to convince them that his company's proposed $61bn acquisition of VMware will not hinder competition, according to Reuters.

The deal has raised concerns on both sides of the Atlantic, with the EU warning it could limit competition in certain hardware component markets. Broadcom was expected to offer remedies soon after the hearing, and the EU's decision deadline is 21 June, which will be extended if concessions are submitted.

Bengaluru-based venture capital firm 3one4 Capital has raised $200m in just two and a half months for its fourth fund, which was oversubscribed to $250m, TechCrunch reports.

The firm has gained a reputation for its contrarian approach to investing and has steered clear of cryptocurrency. The new fund saw half its capital come from Indian investors. Co-founder and partner Pranav Pai told TechCrunch the VC firm is hoping for more dedicated funds to be launched for Indian startups and also emphasised the need for a more robust mergers and acquisitions landscape.

Apple reported its fiscal second-quarter earnings yesterday that beat market expectations, helped mainly by stronger-than-anticipated iPhone sales, but also an increase in its services business.

Sales were down overall, however. Sales in India set a March-quarter record, CEO Tim Cook told analysts in a conference. The country, where Apple recently opened two of its brick-and-mortar stores, was a “major focus” for Apple and he felt it was at “a tipping point,” with large numbers of people entering the middle class.

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Apple reported its fiscal second-quarter earnings yesterday that beat market expectations, helped mainly by stronger-than-anticipated iPhone sales, but also an increase in its services business.

Sales were down overall, however.

The Company posted quarterly revenue of $94.8 billion for the three months through March, down 3 percent year over year, and quarterly earnings per diluted share of $1.52, unchanged from the year-earlier period.

"And as I noted earlier, in a milestone for Apple, we just opened our first two Apple stores in India, in Mumbai and Delhi. I was there to see it for myself, and I couldn't have been more delighted by the excitement and enthusiasm of the customers, developers, creators and team members I got to spend time with,” he said.

"Looking at the business in India, we did set a quarterly record, grew very strong, double digits year-over-year. So, it was quite a good quarter for us, taking a step back, India is an incredibly exciting market. It's a major focus for us.”

Over time, Apple has been expanding its operations in India, including getting its biggest contract manufacturers to expand their operations in the country, as it looks to reduce its dependence on China. On the retail front, Apple opened an online store in India three years ago, and it has incrementally expanded its distribution network of Apple-authorised premium stores. Last month it finally added the first of its physical stores.

Apple has also struck a major partnership with India’s Tata Group, which could be a game changer for both businesses.

For the current quarter, CFO Maestri said the company expects overall revenue to be similar to the March quarter.

Apple’s iPhone sales have increased in the backdrop of a broader smartphone industry contraction of nearly 15 percent during the same time, according to an IDC estimate, CNBC points out. In other words, Apple has taken market share from rivals, especially in the premium phones segment.

Overall, Apple’s sales in three of its four biggest markets fell – the Americas, Japan and Greater China, as Apple calls it. Sales rose in Europe and in the rest of the Asia Pacific, which includes India.

“The dynamism in the market, the vibrancy is unbelievable,” CEO Cook said. “There are a lot of people coming into the middle class, and I really feel that India is at a tipping point, and it's great to be there,” Cook said.

Google has started rolling out passkeys as an alternative to passwords for signing into its platform, the internet search giant said in a blog post yesterday. Pando, a supply chain software company, has raised $30 million in its Series B funding round, bringing the total capital raised to $45 million. Also in this brief, Infosys makes an ecosystem play in banking and financial services with a new report; fintech is estimated to hit $1.5 trillion in India by 2030; and Kazam, an EV infrastructure management platform provider, has raised $3.6 million from Avaana Climate Fund.

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Google has started rolling out passkeys as an alternative to passwords for signing into its platform, the internet search giant said in a blog post yesterday. Passkeys are easier and more secure than passwords as they allow users to sign in using a fingerprint, face scan or screen lock PIN, instead of relying on memorable but easy-to-guess phrases like “password123”.

Passkeys are also resistant to online attacks like phishing, making them more secure than SMS one-time codes. Google Workspace administrators will soon be able to enable passkeys for end-users during sign-in. However, passwords and two-step verification will still work for Google accounts.

And among Google’s billions of users are its massive Android user base in India. According to the 'Internet in India Report 2022' by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and KANTAR, 52 percent of Indians (759 million) are active Internet users, with rural India driving much of the growth.

The report predicts that by 2025, the number of active internet users in India will reach 900 million, with 56 percent of new users coming from rural India. However, there is a significant digital divide between states, with some having much lower levels of internet penetration than others.

As mobile internet expands further into India, fintech is an area that is expected to continue to grow strongly. According to a report by Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and QED Investors, financial technology revenues are expected to increase from $245 billion to $1.5 trillion by 2030.

In some IT services news, Infosys and HFS Research conducted a study titled "The ecosystem imperative: How to create new sources of value in BFS enterprises," which found that creating collaborative ecosystems is the new hope for driving growth and creating new forms of value for BFS enterprises.

While revenue growth and profitability are still top business objectives for firms, the creation of ecosystems is a new contender. However, without an interim stage of enterprise modernization, efforts to create ecosystems may fail. Acquiring and retaining talent, lack of centralized data governance, and legacy tech are the biggest roadblocks to ROI from innovation investments.

In some startup funding news, Pando, a supply chain software company, has raised $30 million in its Series B funding round, bringing the total capital raised to $45 million. The funding was led by Iron Pillar and Uncorrelated Ventures and included participation from existing investors Nexus Venture Partners, Chiratae Ventures, and Next47, as well as several American CEOs and angel investors.

And Kazam, a platform for managing electric mobility infrastructure, has raised $3.6 million in a funding round led by Avaana Climate Fund, the company said in a press release yesterday.

Geoffrey Hinton, a leading figure in artificial intelligence (AI), has resigned from Google, warning of the dangers of the field; Samsung has temporarily restricted the use of generative AI, including ChatGPT, for its employees due to cases of misuse of the technology; and IBM CEO Arvind Krishna has announced that the company expects to pause hiring for certain roles, as approximately 7,800 jobs could be replaced by artificial intelligence (AI) and automation in the coming years, Reuters reports. Also in this brief, Freshworks, India’s second biggest SaaS company, beats street expectations.

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eBay has appointed Vidmay Naini as General Manager for Global Emerging Markets, overseeing growth in Southeast Asia, India, Eastern Europe, Israel, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, TechCrunch reports.

Naini, who was previously in charge of eBay's Southeast Asia and India businesses, will focus on supporting small and medium-sized businesses. eBay's 2022 Southeast Asia Small Online Business Trade Report found that 99 percent of small businesses on eBay currently export items to an average of 25 different international markets, with 68% of eBay-enabled small businesses in six Southeast Asian countries exporting to 10 or more international markets.

Geoffrey Hinton, a leading figure in artificial intelligence (AI), has resigned from Google, warning of the dangers of the field, the New York Times and the BBC report, among others.

Hinton, who is known as the godfather of AI, has developed pioneering research on neural networks and deep learning, helping to pave the way for systems such as ChatGPT. He has voiced concerns about the rapid development of AI chatbots which could become more intelligent than humans, potentially being used for "bad things".

Samsung has temporarily restricted the use of generative AI, including OpenAI's ChatGPT, for its employees due to cases of misuse of the technology, CNBC reports.

The company has advised workers not to enter any personal or company-related information into the services and to take precautions when using ChatGPT and other products outside of work. Samsung is still looking for ways to safely use generative AI to enhance employee productivity and efficiency.

IBM has announced that it expects to pause hiring for certain roles as approximately 7,800 jobs could be replaced by AI and automation in the coming years, Reuters reports.

Hiring specifically in back-office functions such as human resources will be suspended or slowed. 30 percent of non-customer-facing roles could be replaced by AI and automation within five years. The reduction could include not replacing roles vacated by attrition.

The CEOs of Microsoft, Alphabet's Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic will meet with Vice President Kamala Harris and top administration officials to discuss key AI issues, Reuters reports.

US President Joe Biden's administration has been seeking public comments on proposed accountability measures for AI systems. In a blog post on Monday, deputies from the White House Domestic Policy Council and White House Office of Science and Technology Policy wrote about how the technology can pose a serious risk to workers.

Freshworks beat quarterly revenue estimates and posted its first adjusted operating profit, according to Reuters. Rising interest rates, high inflation, and a banking crisis have worsened the global economic outlook in recent months, forcing businesses to slash their technology budgets.

Freshworks' revenue rose 20% in Q1 to $137.7 million, and it posted an adjusted operating profit of $3.9 million. Net loss narrowed to $42.7 million, from $49.1 million a year earlier.

India accounts for an insignificant share of patents worldwide, an analysis by Nasscom, the country’s top tech lobby, shows. In a report titled Unpacking Indians IP landscape, Nasscom yesterday pointed out that China accounted for 46.6 percent of all patents filed in 2021, as applications returned to pre-Covid levels. The US, Japan and South Korea are other major patent filers. India had a dismal 1.8 percent. Also in this brief, UK’s competition authorities have blocked Microsoft’s $68.9 billion deal to buy Activision Blizzard; and Infosys and Walmart team up on a software solution for retailers.

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Britain’s top competition regulator on Wednesday moved to block Microsoft’s acquisition of video game publisher Activision Blizzard, in a big blow to the US tech giant, CNBC reports.

Microsoft said it plans to appeal the decision.

The UK Competition and Markets Authority said it opposed the deal as it raises competition concerns in the nascent cloud gaming market. The CMA previously held concerns about competition in games consoles being undermined but ruled out this concern in a preliminary decision in March, according to CNBC.

Microsoft could make Activision’s games exclusive to its cloud gaming platform, Xbox Game Pass, cutting off distribution to other key industry players, the CMA said in a press release yesterday.

Infosys, yesterday, said it was teaming up with Walmart Commerce Technologies to sell and implement a software package solution called Store Assist to make pickups, deliveries and shipping from stores more efficient.

Infosys has a Consumer and Retail focused practice that has helped more than 190 retailers worldwide to modernise their operations to be able to take real advantage of data and analytics, according to the press release.

Separately, Infosys also said that it is extending its collaboration with Brent Council in the UK to make its digital learning platform, Springboard, available to local small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Pilani Innovation and Entrepreneurship Development Society, the technology business incubator at Birla Institute of Technology and Science, has teamed up with Microsoft to set up an incubation cell at the institute. PIED and Microsoft have signed an MoU to foster startups and support entrepreneurs, BITS said in a press release.

Nasscom, India’s biggest technology lobby, yesterday released findings of a study that looked at patents filed in India and points out that India is doing poorly and has much work to do.

In FY22, patent filings increased 13.6 percent over the previous fiscal year, Nasscom said in a press release. The share of domestic filings increased to 44.4 percent of all patents filed, compared with 41.6 percent in FY21.

Only 20 patents are filed in India per million population, compared with 1,770 in Japan, as of 2021. And the average time an application remains pending is three times longer in India as against Japan. There are 300 applications filed in India for every $100 billion of GDP, versus 5,738 in China.

Based on data from WIPO, Nasscom’s analysis shows that more than two-thirds of all patents filed worldwide, at 67.6 percent, were in Asia. This compared with 54.6 percent in 2011.

China, by far, leads the patent filings in Asia, accounting for 46.6 percent of all patents filed worldwide. The US is next, at 17.4 percent. Japan accounted for 8.5 percent and South Korea for 7 percent. India’s share was an insignificant 1.8 percent.