One Thing Today in Tech

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 an update to the iPhone and iPad’s operating systems to fix a vulnerability that hackers may already have been exploiting.

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Apple, earlier today, released an update to the iPhone and iPad’s operating systems to fix a vulnerability that hackers may already have been exploiting, TechCrunch reports.

On its security update page, Apple wrote that it “is aware of a report that this issue may have been actively exploited.”

Apple credited an anonymous researcher for the discovery, and also thanked Citizen Lab “for their assistance.” Citizen Lab is a digital rights research group at the University of Toronto’s Munk School, known for exposing the abuse of government hacking tools such as those made by Israel’s NSO Group, according to TechCrunch.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is allowing more people to test out its ChatGPT-powered update to Bing, with the Windows software maker also working on an iOS version that could arrive within weeks, Apple Insider reports.

Twilio, yesterday, announced plans to cut around 17 percent of its workforce or roughly 1,500 jobs, CNBC reported, citing a blog post by the San Francisco-based cloud-based communications software provider.

The estimate of 1500 layoffs is based on the 8,992 employees reported as of Sept. 30, 2022, in a company filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to CNBC.

In some fintech news, India’s IT Ministry has lifted its recent ban on seven of the 90 or so lending apps that the government wanted to block over connections to China as well as concerns of predatory lending practices, TechCrunch reports.

The seven apps that were removed from the list of banned operators include PayU’s LazyPay, Kissht, KreditBee and Indiabulls’ Home Loans, TechCrunch reports, citing a person familiar with the development.

The IT Ministry also lifted the ban on mPokket, Buddy Loan and Faircent, according to a copy of the order seen by TechCrunch. The ban was lifted after the companies showed that they did not have Chinese investors on their cap tables, according to TechCrunch.

And finally, some exciting news from Blue Origin, the aerospace company started by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, was shared in a low-key blog post.

Over the last two years, the company has assembled a team that developed the technologies needed to make solar panels, wires and the protective cover glass needed for those panels – all with material found in the Lunar regolith, the loose deposits on the surface of the Moon.

Further, this team has developed manufacturing processes that involve “zero carbon emissions, no water, and no toxic ingredients or other chemicals,” and therefore with exciting potential to directly benefit the Earth, the company said in the blog post on Feb. 10.

Blue Origin is calling the clutch of technologies developed for this purpose, Blue Alchemist.

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. Also in this brief, a US lawmaker wants children to be 16 before they can access social media, and how some strange words are breaking ChatGPT.

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Tata Consultancy Services has won a new mega order from its long-standing customer Phoenix Group, UK’s largest long-term savings and retirements provider, India’s biggest IT services company said in a press release earlier this week.

The 600-million-pound order (or about $726 million) involves the digital transformation of Phoenix Group’s ReAssure business using a platform based on TCS’s BaNCS, the company’s core banking software platform.

A US lawmaker wants to introduce legislation to protect children online and reduce the influence of big tech companies on children, NBC reports. Josh Hawley, a senator in the US Congress wants to establish laws including setting the age threshold to be on social media at 16.

Senator Hawley’s agenda will include mandating social media companies verify the age of their users, providing parents with a right to demand that tech companies delete their kids' data and commissioning a wide-ranging congressional mental-health study on the impact social media has on children.

ChatGPT, the AI chatbot from OpenAI that can turn out poems and essays, fix code and clear MBA exams, is flummoxed by a cluster of keywords, two researchers have discovered, but they don’t know why, yet, Vice reports.

These keywords — or “tokens,” which serve as ChatGPT’s base vocabulary — include Reddit usernames and at least one participant of a Twitch-based Pokémon game.

When ChatGPT was asked about “SolidGoldMagikarp,” it was repeated back as “distribute.” The issue affected earlier versions of the GPT model as well. When an earlier model was asked to repeat “StreamerBot,” for example, it said, “You’re a jerk.”

Fossil-fuel giant 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 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.

Environmental law charity ClientEarth, which filed the lawsuit, says it is the first case in the world that looks to hold corporate directors personally responsible for failing to prepare for the energy transition.

And in some SaaS startup news, Hatica, an engineering analytics software provider, has raised $3.7 million in seed funding led by Sequoia Capital India and Southeast Asia’s Surge programme, with participation from existing investor Kae Capital and several angel investors.

Hatica, based in San Francisco and Bengaluru, was started in 2019 by former Uber engineers Naomi Chopra and Haritabh Singh. Today, it has 20,000 users, according to a press release from the company. The latest funding brings Hatica’s total funding to $6.55 million, according to Tracxn, a private-markets intelligence provider.

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 system race to Google and Apple, Microsoft may now have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get ahead in search.

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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.

“AI will fundamentally change every software category, starting with the largest category of all – search,” Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella, said in the post. “Today, we’re launching Bing and Edge powered by AI co-pilot and chat, to help people get more from search and the web.”

Microsoft is a large investor in Open AI, the research lab whose ChatGPT bot has taken the tech world by storm for its ability to deliver human-like responses, generate content that would be considered creative – like poems – fix bugs in software code and pass MBA exams in ivy league colleges.

Microsoft says the new Bing is different in the following ways: Beyond generating a list of relevant links, Bing consolidates reliable sources across the web to give you a single, summarised answer.

The company claims you can search the way you talk, text, and think. Bing takes your complex searches and shares back a detailed response.

There is also a chat feature that you can use to naturally ask follow-up questions to your initial search to get personalised replies. Bing can be used as a creative tool. It can help you write poems, and stories, or even share ideas for a project.

“It's a new day in search,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told reporters yesterday at the company headquarters, Casey Newton, a widely followed tech futurist, reported in his popular newsletter.

“It's a new paradigm for search. Rapid innovation is going to come. The race starts today,” Nadella added.

In the past, Microsoft lost the mobile operating system race to Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS. And, up until now, its Windows browser Bing search was seen as a distant competitor to Google’s Chrome browser and Google search.

Using the reimagined Bing on stage, a top marketing executive at the company planned a five-day trip to Mexico City, identified the best 65” television, and then refined his query to find the best 65” TV for gaming. He generated a list of history’s top Japanese poets, augmented with sample haikus, and then put together a quiz about music in the 1990s, Newton writes in his newsletter.

All this the marketing executive did more or less instantly, Newton says, with the fluidity that is now familiar to users of ChatGPT but bolstered by the knowledge that soon this tool would be available to the masses, and for free.

Meanwhile, Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced on Feb. 6 that the company is releasing its own AI conversational service, called Bard.

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 light utility helicopters. Also in this brief, India is cracking down on gambling apps and unauthorised loan apps.

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The Indian Navy carried out a successful landing and takeoff of the naval version of India’s light combat aircraft on the INS Vikrant, India’s indigenous aircraft carrier, the Ministry of Defence said in a press release yesterday.

The navy also successfully tested the landing and takeoff of the Russian-made MIG-29K on the aircraft carrier, which marks the integration of the fighter aircraft with India’s first indigenous carrier. The carrier was commissioned in September last year.

India is also developing a twin-engine deck-based fighter based on the LCA, which is a single-engine aircraft, The Hindu reported yesterday. That aircraft is projected to be ready by 2031, according to the report.

Separately, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, yesterday, opened India’s largest helicopter factory at Tumakuru, near Bengaluru. The manufacturing facility, established by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, will initially produce light utility helicopters, according to a government statement.

The helicopter is an indigenously designed and developed three-ton class, single-engine multipurpose utility aircraft. Initially, this factory will produce around 30 helicopters a year which can be enhanced to 60 and then 90 per year in a phased manner, according to the release.

Fintech startups Kissht and PayU’s LazyPay are among the apps that India’s IT Ministry blocked yesterday, in an ongoing crackdown on the misuse of consumer data, TechCrunch reported.

Over the last two years, India has blocked hundreds of apps and sites for their links to China, as border tensions escalated with the powerful neighbour and concerns over cybersecurity ratcheted up. In the case of the loan apps, concerns have mounted that several operators of such apps have been predatory in their practices.

India now has clear rules on how fintech app providers are to operate, including telling consumers upfront what the total cost of their loans will be.

In the latest crackdown, India is in the process of blocking 232 apps, some with links to China, that offer betting and loan services, according to TechCrunch. Nearly 140 of these apps are in the betting and gambling category, whereas over 90 provide unauthorised loan services.

India’s electric vehicle sector is now the third largest in the world, by the number of companies and startups, behind the US and China, according to a report on the sector from Tracxn, a private-markets intelligence provider.

In terms of funding, the Indian EV space is the fourth biggest after the US, China and Sweden, according to the report, which was released yesterday. India reached the milestone of 1 million EVs sold in 2022, with electric 2-wheelers being the biggest segment.

In 2022, The EV space recorded its highest-ever total funding in a decade. Total funding into EV startups in India jumped 117 percent to $1.66 billion in 2022, compared with $766 million in 2021.

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 for the budget.

The International Monetary Fund yesterday revised upward its global growth projections for the year, after better-than-expected data on spending by American households and businesses, and in other countries, and Europe’s handling of its energy crisis, CNBC reports. Also in this report, pet fish apparently changed their owner’s Nintendo username, downloaded a new avatar, set up a PayPal account and even charged his credit card, CNN reports. And, after getting an MBA, ChatGPT is now fixing software bugs.

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The International Monetary Fund yesterday revised upward its global growth projections for the year, after better-than-expected data on spending by American households and businesses, and in other countries, and Europe’s handling of its energy crisis, CNBC reports.

The fund warned that higher interest rates and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine were still reasons for worry.

In its latest economic update, the IMF said the global economy will grow 2.9 percent this year — which represents a 0.2 percentage point improvement from its previous forecast in October. However, it said that number would still mean a fall from an expansion of 3.4 percent in 2022.

It also revised its projection for 2024 down to 3.1 percent.

“Growth will remain weak by historical standards, as the fight against inflation and Russia’s war in Ukraine weigh on activity,” Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, director of the research department at the IMF, said in a blog post.

Apple is working on a foldable iPad for 2024, CNBC reported yesterday, citing well-known Apple watcher Ming-Chi Kuo. The analyst had previously predicted a foldable iPhone for 2024.

Facebook can secretly drain its users’ cellphone batteries, a former employee contends in a lawsuit, New York Post reports.

The practice, known as “negative testing,” allows tech companies to “surreptitiously” run down a phone’s battery in the name of testing features or issues such as how fast their app runs or how an image might load, according to data scientist George Hayward, the New York Post reports.

Hayward said in a Manhattan Federal Court lawsuit that he was fired in November for refusing to participate in negative testing. The lawsuit, which sought unspecified damages, has since been withdrawn because Hayward is required to go to arbitration, according to New York Post.

Computer science researchers from Johannes Gutenberg University and University College London, have found that ChatGPT can fix bugs in software code quite well. In fact, it can outperform existing bug-fixing programs, because of its ability to ask for more information and learn from that.

Mercedes-Benz says it is the world's first automotive company to introduce SAE Level-3 conditionally automated driving. SAE previously for the Society of Automotive Engineers, an organisation developing automotive standards in the US. It is not called SAE International. And Level-3 autonomy refers to a stage where the car can take over certain driving functions although the driver is expected to be always ready to take back control.

Pet fish playing a video game in Japan managed to log on to the Nintendo Switch store, change their owner’s avatar, set up a Pay Pal account and rack up a credit card bill, CNN reports.

And it was all live-streamed on the internet.

The US Justice Department yesterday accused Google of abusing its dominance in digital advertising, and said the internet giant should be forced to sell its ad manager suite, Reuters reports. Venture capital funding of startups fell more than 38 percent in 2022 versus 2021, GlobalData finds. Indian software-as-a-service companies, however, were a relative bright spot, according to a separate report, by Bain & Company, a consultancy, which estimates the sector is maturing and will continue to grow. And Pune startup Ecozen has raised $25 million in equity funding and loans.

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The US Justice Department yesterday accused Google of abusing its dominance in digital advertising, and said the internet giant should be forced to sell its ad manager suite, Reuters reports.

That business generated about 12 percent of Google's revenues in 2021 but also plays a vital role in the search engine and cloud company's overall sales, according to Reuters.

"Google has used anticompetitive, exclusionary, and unlawful means to eliminate or severely diminish any threat to its dominance over digital advertising technologies," the antitrust complaint said. Google’s advertising business is responsible for about 80 percent of its revenue.

In the world of startups, as concerns about global economic slowdown took hold, venture capital investments in India fell 38.2 percent in 2022 versus 2021, according to GlobalData.

An analysis of GlobalData’s financial deals database reveals that a total of 1,726 VC funding deals worth $20.9 billion were announced in India in 2022. The number of deals in 2021 was about the same, at 1,715, but the amount of funding was much higher, at $33.8 billion.

Meanwhile, India’s Software as a Service (SaaS) ventures are a relatively bright spot, according to Bain & Company, a multinational consultancy. Indian SaaS companies are poised to command 8 percent of the global SaaS market, generating $35 billion in annual recurring revenue (ARR) by 2027, growing at 20–25 percent per annum, Bain concludes in a new report that was released yesterday.

“We are now seeing the emergence of a set of Indian SaaS companies who have a right to win not just in India, but globally, Arpan Sheth, a partner at Bain, and co-author of the report.

The outlook for Indian SaaS investment remains broadly positive over the next 12 months, with ~90 percent of Indian SaaS investors expecting to increase or maintain their capital allocation to SaaS.

Ecozen, a cold-chain tech startup, has raised $25 million in equity and debt funding, the Pune company said in a press release. The Series C equity portion was led by Nuveen and Dare Ventures, with participation from the Export-Import Bank of India, and existing investors Caspian and Hivos-Triodos Fonds.

Omnivore and IFA, early investors in Ecozen, took partial exits in this round. Ecozen was founded by three IIT Kharagpur alumni, Devendra Gupta, Prateek Singhal and Vivek Pandey. They sell solutions for motor controls, IoT, and energy storage focused on cold chains and irrigation for the agri sector.

Amazon has launched Amazon Air, its dedicated air cargo fleet in India, partnering with Quickjet, the ecommerce giant said in a press release yesterday. It will start with Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru. Activist investor Elliott Management’s next target is Salesforce, Wall Street Journal reports. Also in this brief, Microsoft invests more money in OpenAI, and GPT3, the AI chatbot, just passed an MBA exam at the prestigious Wharton School, NBC News reports.

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Amazon has launched Amazon Air, its dedicated air cargo fleet, in India the e-commerce giant said in a press release yesterday.

Amazon has partnered with Bengaluru-based cargo airline Quikjet to launch this service, which it said will speed up its deliveries. Amazon, using Boeing 737-800 for the service, will initially use Amazon Air to deliver goods in Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bengaluru.

Microsoft yesterday announced in a post what it called the third phase of its long-term partnership with OpenAI through a multi-year, multi-billion-dollar investment.

This agreement follows Microsoft’s previous investments in 2019 and 2021, extending the ongoing collaboration in AI supercomputing and research. The two companies can independently commercialize the resulting advanced AI technologies, according to the post.

Microsoft didn’t say how much it was investing, but the figure could be $10 billion according to Semafor.

Meanwhile, new research conducted by a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School found that the AI chatbot GPT3 was able to pass the final exam for the school's MBA program, NBC News reported earlier today.

Professor Christian Terwiesch, who authored the research paper "Would Chat GPT3 Get a Wharton MBA? A Prediction Based on Its Performance in the Operations Management Course," said that the bot scored between a B- and B on the exam, according to NBC News.

Activist investor Elliott Management Corp. has made a multi-billion-dollar investment in Salesforce, adding to the pressures facing the business-software provider that has just announced a 10 percent reduction of its workforce, Wall Street Journal reported yesterday, citing people familiar with the matter.

Back in India, in some computer hardware news, Rashi Peripherals, a Mumbai-based distributor of computers and computer peripherals, is seeking to raise Rs. 750 crore in an IPO, according to a press release.

Log9, a battery technologies startup in Bengaluru, has raised $40 million as a part of its Series B funding, the company said in a press release yesterday. The investment comprises equity funding and loans, led by Amara Raja Batteries and Petronas Ventures.

Several other investors also participated.

Founded in 2015 by Akshay Singhal, Kartik Hajela and Pankaj Sharma, Log9 says it has in-house competencies ranging from electrode materials to cell fabrication to battery packs.

The new investment will help Log9 raise its manufacturing capacity to 2 GWh by the end of 2024, and commission India's first fully integrated lithium-ion cell production line, Singhal said in the press release. The company will also invest about $12 million in developing its cell and battery technologies.

India’s Supreme Court yesterday rejected Google’s ask that an order by the Competition Commission imposing a fine and changes to its market practices with respect to Android software be stayed. Google had approached the top court after the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal, earlier this month, had refused to stay the Competition Commission’s order while it heard the matter. Also in this brief, TCS wins an order from Bombardier. And PhonePe is now privately valued at $12 billion, after a new investment from General Atlantic.

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India’s Supreme Court yesterday rejected Google’s ask that an order by the Competition Commission imposing a fine and changes to its market practices be stayed.

Google had approached the top court after the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal, earlier this month, had refused to stay the Competition Commission’s order while it heard the matter.

The Competition Commission of India, on Oct. 20, imposed a penalty of Rs. 1337.76 crore ($162 million) on Google for abusing its dominant position in multiple markets in the Android Mobile device ecosystem, apart from issuing a cease-and-desist order.

The value of the fine is provisional and based on data including Google’s revenue in the Indian market, the Competition Commission said in its statement. However, the fine is a landmark decision that puts India alongside the EU in finding that Google has consistently tried and succeeded in eliminating competition using its market dominance.

The Commission, which has been investigating Google’s market practices since 2019, also directed Google to modify its conduct within a defined timeline, according to a statement on the competition authority’s website.

The Commission found that Google enforced multiple restrictive agreements with mobile device manufacturers that “guaranteed that distribution channels for competing search services are altogether eliminated by prohibiting OEMs from offering devices based on Android forks.”

The Competition Commission had also ordered Google to comply with 10 different measures. Among them, Google must ensure that OEMs are not restricted from developing and selling their version of Android on their devices. And Google must ensure that consumers are easily able to uninstall its pre-installed proprietary app.

With respect to yesterday’s Supreme Court order, “This is a landmark decision in the history of competition law jurisprudence in India and globally,” Naval Chopra, a partner specialising in competition law practice at Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas, a prominent Indian law firm, said in an email.

The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal is set to hear arguments from Google and the CCI on February 13, before it makes a final decision on the Commission’s order.

Tata Consultancy Services has won an order from aircraft and defence manufacturer Bombardier, to upgrade its IT systems using SAP’s business operations management software. The company didn’t provide details on the value of the contract. TCS will modernize the aviation company’s systems that support its engineering, manufacturing, aftermarket services and defence activities.

PhonePe, a fintech company in Bengaluru owned by Walmart’s Flipkart, has raised $350 million in funding from private equity company General Atlantic.

The deal was struck at a pre-money valuation of $12 billion, PhonePe said yesterday in a press release

GoMechanic, a car service startup backed by VC investors including Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global Management and Chiratae, will cut 70 percent of its staff and undergo an independent audit of its books, the company’s co-founder Amit Bhasin said in a post on LinkedIn yesterday. Also in this brief, Microsoft yesterday confirmed the 10,000 job cuts that had previously been reported in the news, and a TIME investigation reveals how OpenAI used lowly paid workers in Kenya to remove toxic content from ChatGPT.

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GoMechanic, a car service startup backed by VC investors including Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global Management and Chiratae, will cut 70 percent of its staff and undergo an independent audit of its books, the company’s co-founder Amit Bhasin said in a post on LinkedIn yesterday.

Due diligence conducted by accounting firm EY for prospective GoMechanic investors, SoftBank Group and Malaysian sovereign fund Khazanah Nasional, alleged that the Gurugram-based venture had inflated revenue, Bloomberg reported yesterday, citing people familiar with the matter.

EY’s research alleged that about 60 of the more than 1,000 GoMechanic service centres may have violated accounting rules to overstate revenue and divert funds, according to Bloomberg.

GoMechanic was in talks to raise $100 million in a funding round led by Khazanah, Bloomberg had previously reported. SoftBank and Khazanah called off the talks and informed Sequoia, according to Bloomberg.

“We got carried away … we made errors in judgment as we followed growth at all costs, including in regard to financial reporting, which we deeply regret,” Bhasin said in his LinkedIn post. The company will be restructured while the founders look for more funding, he added.

Microsoft, yesterday, confirmed it was cutting about 5 percent of its workforce, affecting 10,000 people around the world. Sky News had reported the news previously.

“We are making changes that will result in the reduction of our overall workforce by 10,000 jobs through the end of FY23 Q3. This represents less than 5 percent of our total employee base, with some notifications happening today,” CEO Satya Nadella said in a note that was posted on the company’s website.

ChatGPT is being hailed as revolutionary in the world of AI for its ability to turn out human-like creative content. However, in its quest to make ChatGPT less toxic, its maker, OpenAI, used outsourced Kenyan labourers earning less than $2 per hour, a TIME magazine investigation has found.

OpenAI’s outsourcing partner in Kenya was Sama, a San Francisco-based firm that employs workers in Kenya, Uganda and India to label data for Silicon Valley clients like Google, Meta and Microsoft, TIME says in its report that was published yesterday.

Sama markets itself as an “ethical AI” company and claims to have helped lift more than 50,000 people out of poverty, according to TIME.

The data labellers employed by Sama on behalf of OpenAI were paid a take-home wage of between around $1.32 and $2 per hour depending on seniority and performance. For this story, TIME reviewed hundreds of pages of internal Sama and OpenAI documents, including workers’ payslips, and interviewed four Sama employees who worked on the project. All the employees spoke on condition of anonymity out of concern for their livelihoods, according to TIME.