One Thing Today in Tech

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 fiscal year.

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Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Meta Platforms, used her influence on two occasions to bury reporting about her then-boyfriend, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, the Wall Street Journal reports. 

The Journal reports that, in 2016 and again in 2019, Sandberg contacted MailOnline, the online version of the UK’s Daily Mail tabloid, in an attempt to prevent it from reporting about a restraining order filed against Kotick by his ex-girlfriend. On both occasions, the story did not run. Now, Facebook is investigating the issue to see if Sandberg violated company policy.

Sandberg attained fame for her book 'Lean In' in 2013, encouraging women to fight for their rights in their careers and at home. But Kotick is under a cloud for allegedly ignoring workplace harassment at Activision Blizzard, which is at the heart of multiple lawsuits against the game studio company, according to The Verge.

Google is introducing a ‘reject all’ button in Europe, which will allow users to reject all tracking cookies with one click in the same way the ‘accept all’ button allows all cookies. Google has added this new option after the EU found its existing dialogue boxes were in violation of the region’s data laws, The Verge reports.

The new menu will appear on Google Search and YouTube if users are not signed in to an account. If they are signed in, they can adjust tracking options through Google’s data and privacy menu, according to The Verge.

HCL Technologies expects revenue to increase by 12-14 percent for the current fiscal year, India’s third-biggest IT services company, said yesterday, reporting its latest earnings results.

The billionaire Shiv Nadar’s Noida company said revenue increased 12.7 percent in constant currency to almost $11.5 billion for the year ended March 31, 2022. Sales rose 1.1 percent to just under $3 billion for the March quarter, over the previous three months.HCL Tech ended FY22 with $8.3 billion in new orders, a 14 percent increase over the previous fiscal year. The company added 39,900 new recruits for FY22, with a net addition of 11,100 to end the year with 208,877 employees. Staff churn or attrition was at 21.9 percent at the end of FY22 on a 12 months basis.

WNS, a business process management services provider, said its annual revenue crossed the billion-dollar mark during FY22. The New York-listed company yesterday reported FY22 revenues of $1.1 billion, a 21.6 percent increase.

Accenture has acquired Ergo in Argentina which helps companies tap big data, analytics and artificial intelligence. Ergo’s team of 200 data specialists will join Accenture’s data and AI team within its Cloud First unit, the company said in a press release yesterday.

Accenture has also announced its intent to acquire Greenfish, an independent engineering and advisory company specialising in sustainability consultancy services in Europe.

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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. A merger would narrow the gap between the combined entity and Tech Mahindra, India’s fifth-biggest IT services company, by revenue. By market value, the combined entity would surpass Tech Mahindra, at current share prices.

Meanwhile, Makers Lab, the research and development arm of Tech Mahindra, has set up a Quantum Center of Excellence, called QNxt, in Helsinki, the company said in a press release. The centre will accelerate the adoption and commercialisation of quantum technologies globally.

The European Union is a step closer to mandating USB Type-C chargers across electronic devices, which will be a blow to Apple, which continues to require its proprietary lightning charger for its iPhones and iPads.

On Wednesday, the EU’s Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee adopted its position on the revised Radio Equipment Directive with 43 votes in favour and two against, according to a press release from the European Parliament.

The EU wants to have a strategy by the end of 2026 that allows for minimum interoperability of any new charging solutions.

Brave Software has released a new feature on the Brave browser, called Discussions, which will surface results from forums like Reddit, the company said in a blogpost yesterday. To find discussions, just search for what you want using Brave Search.

Ashwin Damera, Founder and CEO of Eruditus and Emeritus has invested Rs. 240 crore ($32 Million) in venture debt finance company, InnoVen Capital India Fund. The investment was made through Ashwin’s family office which is co-managed by Ashwin and his wife Bhagyashree Damera.

Loop, a Pune-based healthcare and insurance startup has raised $25 million in a Series B round co-led by General Catalyst and Elevation Capital, the company said in a press release.

Lightspeed has elevated three executives to the role of partner, on its early-stage investment advisory team, the VC firm said in a blog post on April 19. The three are Shuvi Shrivastava, who joined the firm as an associate in 2015, Pinn Lawjindakul, and Rahul Taneja, who both joined in 2020.

Shuvi was responsible for Lightspeed’s investments in startups such as Darwinbox, Uni, Pixxel, Rattle, Bhanzu, and xFlow. Pinn helped expand Lightspeed’s operations in southeast Asia and Rahul Taneja was chief business officer before being named partner, according to the post.

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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 platform helps enterprises increase the efficiency and efficacy of their employee skilling and up-skilling initiatives, while also delivering data-driven insights to improve their broader enterprise talent development efforts.

Global industrial equipment and facilities distributor RS Components and Tata Consultancy Services yesterday announced RS Industria, an industrial internet of things solution, Manufacturer magazine reports.

RS Industria connects real-time factory floor data with powerful analytical capabilities that continuously support RS Components’ manufacturing customers in their maintenance and repair activities. The Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT) platform, hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS) means the industrial supplier can better support those on the factory floor.

A Pune-based labour union has raised a complaint against Infosys with the central labour ministry and sought the removal of a non-compete agreement clause in offer letters given by the the company, Economic Times reports.

Infosys’s employee agreement states that an employee shall not accept for six months an employment offer from “named competitors” such as TCS, Wipro and HCL among others if the new job involves working with a customer with whom the employee has previously worked in the preceding 12 months during their stint at Infosys, the union, Nascent Information Technology Employees Senate, said in its complaint, according to ET.

Brave, the company behind the eponymous fast-growing browser, is rolling out a new feature called De-AMP, which allows Brave users to bypass Google-hosted accelerated mobile pages, and instead visit the content’s publisher directly. AMP harms users' privacy, security and internet experience, and just as bad, AMP helps Google further monopolise and control the direction of the Web, Brave said in a blogpost.

Indian Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) startups are expected to grow 55-70 percent to clock overall revenue of $116 billion by 2026, venture capital firm Chiratae and management consultancy Zinnov said in a report, according to Economic Times.

The report, titled ‘India SaaS: Punching through the global pecking order,’ notes that overall funding for Indian SaaS startups is expected to touch $6.5 billion this year, compared with $4 billion in 2021. The report also says that the average size of investments in Indian SaaS companies grew to $56 million in 2021 from roughly $25 million in 2020, according to ET.

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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 participating in the global semiconductor manufacturing supply chain, by 2030, according to a report by the Indian Electronics and Semiconductor Manufacturing Association (IESA).

According to IESA’s ‘Global Semiconductor Manufacturing Supply Chain Report,’ from $440 billion in 2020, the semiconductor manufacturing market, comprising materials, equipment and services, is likely to touch $1 trillion by 2030. The overall global opportunity across these segments is estimated to be $550-600 billion, and of that Indian industry could capture about $80 billion, IESA said in a press release.

ReshaMandi, a digital commerce platform provider for the natural fibre supply chain, has set up Asia's second-largest cocoon mandi in Ramanagara, near Bengaluru, the company said in a press release. The cutting-edge processing plant and warehouse will benefit over 30,000 sericulture farmers and serve over 6000 reelers to optimise the silk value chain and produce high-quality raw silk through data-driven interventions.

Whatfix, a digital adoption platforms provider, has acquired Leap.is, a mobile-first onboarding and assistance platform startup that brings the value of digital adoption platforms to mobile applications. The deal marks Whatfix’s first mobile DAP product-focused acquisition, as well as its largest M&A deal so far, according to a press release. Whatfix didn’t provide financial details.

Leap’s toolset will integrate with Whatfix’s existing applications by adding guidance to mobile apps to improve activations and adoption, reduce time-to-ship for onboarding experiences, and increase the customisation of user experiences overall.

UrbanPiper, a restaurant management platform provider, has raised $24 million in Series B funding led by existing investors Sequoia Capital India and Tiger Global, new investors Swiggy and Zomato, and several angel investors, according to a press release.

Founded by Saurabh Gupta, Anirban Majumdar and Manav Gupta, UrbanPiper is a B2B software platform that aims to become a single window to help restaurants run their entire operations. The Bengaluru startup is developing a suite of digital applications to ensure all the commerce workflows for a restaurant can happen seamlessly simply and intuitively.

Wipro has named Satya Easwaran as the company’s Country Head for India, leading strategic consulting, transformation and modernisation engagements, India’s fourth-biggest IT services provider said in a press release.

Satya brings global experience in leading end-to-end business transformation programmes for large enterprises in different sectors, according to Wipro. Before joining Wipro, Satya was the Head of Business Consulting and the Telecom, Media and Technology Sector Leader at KPMG India. During his tenure at KPMG, in India and the US, and at Accenture India, Satya held multiple leadership positions in management consulting, with a focus on Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), cloud, digital, and strategy and transformation.

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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 revenue miss

Notes:

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. In 2021, these renewable projects avoided 13.9 million metric tons of carbon emissions, Apple said in a press release last week.

Apple wants to become carbon neutral across its entire supply chain by 2030. The company has been carbon neutral for its own global operations since 2020, according to the release.

Twitter, which has become embroiled in a takeover war, has adopted a ‘poison pill’ resolution after Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, made a $43 billion unsolicited offer to buy the influential microblogging platform provider.

Twitter announced on Friday that if any person or group acquires beneficial ownership of at least 15 percent of the company’s outstanding common stock without the board’s approval, other shareholders will be allowed to purchase additional shares at a discount. The plan is set to expire on April 14, 2023, CNBC reports.

Musk has already purchased more than 9 percent of Twitter.

Infosys shares fell as much as 9 percent in early Mumbai trading today when markets opened after a long weekend. Investors are glum about the company’s sequential quarterly revenue miss for Q4 FY22 and its rising staff churn.

Infosys’s sales for the three months ended March 31, 2022, were at $4.28 billion, a 20.6 percent increase over the year-earlier period and a 1.2 percent increase on Q3 FY22 — missing analysts’ expectations of about 2-2.8 percent growth.

CEO Salil Parekh’s assurance that this was owing to a one-off cut back from a large client, and his confidence about robust demand ahead, doesn’t seem to have assuaged investors’ concerns, as the company’s staff churn hit 27.7 percent at the end of Q4 FY22, on an LTM basis, compared with about 17 percent for larger rival TCS.

Antler, an early-stage venture capital firm, has launched a cohort-based programme for aspiring entrepreneurs in India, called the Antler India Residency, Economic Times reports.

Antler expects 8-10 companies to be born out of each cohort, which will have the chance to receive $270,000 each for a nine percent stake. The funds will help new startups make at least five-six iterations of an early product-market fit, Srivatsa told ET.

Rapido, a bike taxi platform provider, has raised $180 million in Series D funding, led by new investor Swiggy. The round also saw investment from TVS Motor Company, along with existing investors, Westbridge, Shell Ventures, and Nexus Ventures, the company said in a press release.

Observe.AI, which provides an intelligent workforce platform for contact centres, has raised $125 million in Series C funding led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 with participation from Zoom, the company said in a press release.

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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.

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Infosys yesterday reported revenues increased by nearly 20 percent last fiscal year, the highest growth in 11 years, and forecast growth of between 13 percent and 15 percent for the year that started this month.

Revenues touched $16.3 billion for the year ended March 31, 2022, which was a 19.7 percent increase in constant currency, matching the 19.5-20 percent range the company had forecast in January. Earnings per share increased 14.3 percent and free cash flow was more than $3 billion at the end of the year.

“We’ve had an exceptional year … we are gaining market share, we’re building on our leadership in cloud and digital, and we’re working more closely with clients on their transformation programmes,” CEO Salil Parekh told reporters at a press conference in Bengaluru yesterday.

Revenues from services related to digital technologies now account for almost 60 percent of Infosys’s sales, and sales of digital tech services grew by more than 41 percent in FY22. And within digital, cloud services are growing faster. The company’s suite of cloud-based services, called Cobalt, is seeing strong traction, Parekh added.

Infosys’s sales for the fiscal fourth quarter were at $4.28 billion, which was a 20.6 percent increase over the year-earlier period and a 1.2 percent increase on the December quarter. The sequential increase missed analysts’ expectations of about 2-2.8 percent growth, owing to a one-off cutback from a large client.

Infosys, India’s second-biggest software services provider, ended the year with $9.5 billion in the total contract value of large orders — meaning those that are each worth $50 million or more over the life of the contract. TCV for Q4 was $2.3 billion.

Larger rival TCS reported on April 11 that its revenues for the year ended March 31, 2022, rose $3.53 billion, the biggest incremental increase in the company’s history, to touch $25.7 billion, a 15.4 percent increase over the previous fiscal year, in constant currency.

The high rate at which employees are leaving and switching jobs is the biggest concern in the IT services industry today. Infosys has one of the highest rates of this churn, among the top IT providers from India. Attrition at the company kicked up to 27.7 percent at the end of Q4 from 25.5 percent at the end of December. It was only about 11 percent a year ago when uncertainties due to the Covid pandemic were still high.

Today, as the world’s biggest markets return to growth, demand for talent in the IT sector has soared, and churn has surged. The increase in the rate of attrition is also due to how it is calculated, in terms of the 12 months including the reporting period. The rate has begun to come down in more recent months, Infosys CFO Nilanjan Roy told reporters yesterday.

The company hired 85,000 people in FY22, including 22,000 in Q4, with a net addition of 54,396 over the year, to end with 314,015 employees as of March 31, 2022. Infosys is starting the current year with a target of 50,000 recruits. Third-ranked HCL Technologies reports its earnings on April 21 and Wipro, the fourth-biggest Indian IT vendor, will report its earnings on April 29.

Infosys press release

https://shrtm.nu/U0FP

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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 Thierry Delaporte.

Notes:

Tata Consultancy Services reported the highest incremental revenue in the company’s history, announcing its latest earnings results, after markets yesterday. 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.

Revenue for the three months ended March 31 rose 14.3 percent in constant currency terms to $6.7 billion, TCS said in a press release. That is a 2.6 percent from $6.5 billion for the December quarter, matching Street expectations. TCS shares were little changed in early Mumbai trading this morning.

TCS and other large IT services providers are benefitting from clients prioritising their tech budgets, after the Covid-19 pandemic, CEO Rajesh Gopinathan told reporters in Mumbai, in the company’s first in-person earnings press conference in two years. Sales were led by demand in America, the company’s biggest market, and a return to business among retailers, one of the most affected segments during the worst of the pandemic.

TCS, India’s largest software services provider, ended the fiscal year with an order book of almost $35 billion, including the biggest total contract value accumulated in any one quarter, at $11.3 billion in Q4. The company won two very large orders in Q4 that were worth almost a billion dollars each, over the life of the contract, Gopinathan said.

At the end of Q4 FY22, amid an intensifying war for talent, TCS saw staff churn increase by about 200 basis points from the previous quarter to 17.4 percent on a leading twelve months basis, and it will get worse in the short term Gopinathan warned. The company ended FY22 with 592,195 employees, with a net addition of 103,546 staff, as against a target of 40,000 recruits at the beginning of the fiscal year.

Infosys, India’s second-biggest software services provider, is expected to report its Q4 FY22 earnings tomorrow after markets.

Meanwhile, Wipro is doubling down on its acquisition strategy, as CEO Thierry Delaporte is attempting to drag the Bengaluru company back to growth that can be compared favourably with larger rivals Infosys and TCS.

Wipro yesterday announced that it has acquired Convergence Acceleration Solutions (CAS Group), a US-based consulting and programme management company that specialises in large-scale business and technology transformation for the world’s biggest communications service providers.

Wipro CEO Delaporte has been acquiring companies to consolidate and deepen Wipro’s ability to deliver large scale transformation projects for clients in multiple verticals. A year ago, Wipro acquired Capco, a fintech consultancy for $1.45 billion in its largest acquisition. Wipro didn’t provide financial details of the CAS Group purchase, which is smaller, and which brings about 138 consultants into the company’s fold.

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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, citing PwC. Plus, Nissan is stepping up its solid-state batteries plan.

Notes:

India will soon roll out new rules under a 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.

Chandrasekhar was speaking at the inauguration of Bennett University’s Centre for Law and Computing Technology on Saturday. India’s internet rules currently stem from the country’s Information Technology Act, which is more than two decades old. On the internet, that’s like four or five centuries, the minister pointed out.

The central government has just unveiled the national data governance framework and policy that is undergoing public consultation. It will shortly be rolling out cybersecurity policies and guidelines, and very soon after that the government will be working on a new Digital India Act, he said, according to ET.

Tata Sons has infused Rs. 5,882 crore into its flagship e-commerce unit Tata Digital, Economic Times reports, citing regulatory filings from the salt-to-steel conglomerate. This is the highest ever fund allocation in a single tranche and the most that the Tatas have invested into e-commerce in any single fiscal year, according to ET.

The latest funding takes the total investment in Tata Digital to Rs. 11,872 crore in 2021-22, according to the ET report.

India’s startup ecosystem received more than $10 billion in investments during the first three months of 2022, the third consecutive quarter to see such inflow, Press Trust of India reports, citing accounting firm PwC. The quarter also saw 14 new unicorns, meaning startups being privately valued at more than $1 billion each.

The January to March period this year saw 334 funding deals, and the 14 new unicorns take the total to 84 such companies in India, Press Trust reports.

Total fund inflow in Q1 was $10.8 billion, with more than a third of that going to software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies. The SaaS sector also accounted for the most unicorns, at five out of the 14.

Nissan last week unveiled its prototype production facility for laminated all-solid-state battery cells, which the company aims to bring to market in 2028, the Japanese carmaker said in a press release. This prototype facility, within the Nissan Research Center in Kanagawa Prefecture, is aimed at further promoting the development of all-solid-state batteries.

Under its long-term plan, Nissan Ambition 2030, the company aims to launch an EV with all-solid-state batteries developed in-house by fiscal 2028. It plans to establish a pilot production line at its Yokohama Plant in the fiscal year 2024, with materials, design and manufacturing processes for prototype production on the line to be studied at the production facility.

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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 organisations. In addition to calling for immediate action to address the climate crisis, the protestors were calling for the bank to divest from coal, oil, and gas, according to Insider.

The actions of Kalmus and his companions were part of more than a dozen protests staged in cities across the globe this week. This week's protests followed the release of the United Nations' latest climate report.

Amazon is planning to object to the results of the election where workers at a New York warehouse voted to organise with the Amazon Labor Union, according to a deadline extension request the company filed with the National Labor Relations Board, according to The Verge.

Infosys and Rolls-Royce yesterday inaugurated their joint ‘Aerospace Engineering and Digital Innovation Centre’ in Bengaluru. This centre has been established to provide high-end research and development services integrated with advanced digital capabilities to Rolls-Royce’s engineering and group business services from India.

Infosys and Rolls-Royce have agreements on strategic collaborations over the next seven years, India’s second-biggest software services company said in a press release.

Elevation Capital, the early-stage investor that has backed startups such as Swiggy, Paytm, Urban Company and Meesho, has closed its eighth, and largest, India-dedicated fund at $670 million, Economic Times reports. Elevation will look to deploy the money over the next three years.

Unacademy, an ed-tech unicorn that was valued at $3.4 billion last year, has laid off around 1,000 employees in the past few weeks, Economic Times reports. These include on-roll staff and teachers on contract. Around 600 people were fired last week as Unacademy, backed by investors including Softbank Group and Temasek, looks to cut costs amid an impending slowdown in venture funding.

Instoried, a user-friendly, intuitive web platform designed to help people craft empathetic and more effective written content, has signed an agreement with GEM Global Yield, an alternative investment group for a share subscription facility of up to $200 million, to be drawn at the option of the company, for a 36-month term following a public listing.

Omega Seiki Mobility and Log9 Materials have teamed up to deploy 10,000 3-Wheeler Rage+ Rapid EVs in Tier II and III markets of India over the next two years. Supporting these 3W EV Cargo Loaders will be Log9’s InstaCharging stations that charge a 3W completely within 35 minutes, Log9 said in a press release.

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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 allowing users to alter published tweets, and Hypebeast reports. The company revealed the news on Tuesday, saying that it’s been “working on an edit feature since last year.”

Twitter went on to clarify that it didn’t get the idea from a poll, a reference to its newest stakeholder Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, who recently posted a poll asking users if they wanted an edit button. While the decision isn’t entirely up to Musk, Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal retweeted his poll and added that “the consequences of this poll will be important,” according to Hypebeast.

Microsoft has elevated its Garage project Journal, a note-taking app designed for styluses and pens, into a full-fledged product now called Microsoft Journal, the company said on Tuesday, The Verge reports.

The app offers “a delightful freeform personal note-taking experience that lets you take notes and reason through ink,” Microsoft’s Renee Malone said in a blog post. The app lets you write and draw like many other note-taking apps, but it also supports gestures like scratching out words to erase them and circling words or phrases to select them.

Journal can also be used to mark up PDFs, a popular feature, according to The Verge.

Spending on AI systems in the Asia Pacific region will almost double from $17.6 billion in 2022 to around $32 billion in 2025, IDC said in a press release. Over the next five years, the banking industry will continue to invest the most in AI solutions, according to IDC. Hardware will be the leading technology, accounting for more than 49.8 percent of AI spending; the largest areas of investment will be in servers, accounting for more than 84 percent of total spending, while the rest will go toward storage, according to the release.

Two notebooks that belonged to Charles Darwin that were reported stolen from Cambridge University's library have been returned, two decades after they disappeared, Associated Press reports.

The notebooks, which include the 19th-century scientist's famous 1837 "Tree of Life" sketch, went missing in 2001 after being removed for photographing. At the time, staff believed they might have been misplaced. However, after searches of the library's collection of 10 million books, maps, and manuscripts failed to find the books, they were reported stolen to police in October 2020.

Associated Press reports that Cambridge university said on Tuesday that the manuscripts were left in the library inside a pink gift bag, along with a note wishing the librarian a Happy Easter.

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