Gupshup acquires Cloud Communication Startup Knowlarity

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February 3, 2022

Conversational messaging platform providing company Gupshup acquires artificial intelligence-powered cloud communication startup Knowlarity Communications. The company officials did not provide any information regarding the valuation of this acquisition deal.

DC Advisory served as the financial adviser to Knowlarity in this acquisition deal, which is expected to close by February 2022. With this acquisition, Gupshup plans to use Knowlarity’s voice-based AI solutions for call centers and customer care to further expand the capabilities of its chatbot and artificial intelligence-powered messaging service.

Last year, Gupshup achieved unicorn status after its latest funding round led by Tiger Global. Conversational AI platform Gupshup was founded by Beerud Sheth, Dr. Milind R Agarwal, and Rakesh Mathur in 2004.

Gupshup’s platform processes more than 4 billion messages per month and has delivered over 150 billion messages in total. The company has a massive customer base of many industry-leading companies, including Truecaller, DishTV, HDFC Bank OYO, Ola, Zomato, HSBC, ICICI Bank, and many more.

CEO and Co-founder of Gupshup, Beerud Sheth, said, “As business-to-consumer engagement becomes conversational, Gupshup is busy enabling more ways for businesses to deliver rich experiences. With the addition of Knowlarity’s products, businesses will now be able to build seamless conversational experiences across both messaging and voice channels.”

Gurgaon-based cloud telephony firm Knowlarity was founded by Ambarish Gupta and Pallav Pandey in 2009. The startup specializes in providing automated communication by enabling operators to work online via Cloud.

Knowlarity’s services include click-to-call, number masking, multi-level IVR system, AI-powered solutions like Speech Analytics & VoiceBot, and several more. Before getting acquired by Gupshup, the company had raised more than $42 million from investors like Sequoia Capital, Delta Partners Capital Limited, Emergic Ventures, and others.

CEO of Knowlarity, Yatish Mehrotra, said, “Our customer-centric, innovation-focused cultures are perfectly aligned, and we see significant synergies and new products emerging from the combination of two great teams.”

He further mentioned that this agreement would provide their current and prospective customers with enhanced experiences, product enhancements, and significant geographic expansion opportunities.

Open-source database vendor MariaDB set for going public via SPAC

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Osheen Jain

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February 3, 2022

MariaDB, a popular open-source database provider, is the latest company to capitalize on an IPO trend. This morning, MariaDB announced that it intends to become a public company through a merger with Angel Pond Holdings Corporation after closing its $104 million Series D venture round.

The MariaDB’s public deal with Angel Pond Holdings Corporation was announced in an S-1 filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, which describes the Cayman Islands-based biz as a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC).

Major companies like Redhat, Samsung, and Google have used MariaDB to store, manage, and manipulate data across their applications. The open-source feature is a significant selling point, and it also gives the companies great control of visibility into the data.

MariaDB will hit the public market space via New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and be listed as SPAC, set up by former Goldman Sachs partner Theodore Wang and Alibaba co-founder Shihuang Simon Xie.

SPAC is a shell form that raises money, goes public on a stock exchange, and then acquires a private company to train them to turn into a public one while avoiding IPO processes.

This transaction will give MariaDB an enterprise valuation of $672 million, which is expected to close in the second half of 2022. After closing of the transaction, the combined identity will be called MariaDB plc, and current CEO Michael Howard will lead it.

Qpisemi launches AI 2.0 Processors based on Integrated Photonics and Newer Software Paradigm

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Dipayan Mitra

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February 3, 2022

Bengaluru-based semiconductor manufacturing company Qpisemi announces the launch of its new AI 2.0 processors, which are based on the company’s innovation in integrated photonics and newer software paradigm.

The processor can be used to perform various purposes such as bioinformatics, AI modeling, drug discovery, metaverse, manufacturing, and others. According to the company, it’s newly announced AI 2.0 processors use optical processors to carry out neural-network calculations with photons.

The processor is unique as other traditional semiconductors use electrons instead of photons to perform the same operation. Qpisemi claims that AI 2.0 will significantly impact manufacturing, advanced metaverse applications, and supply chain management.

“AI 2.0 is more advanced technology than current DL/ML technologies available. AI 2.0 would enable efficient actionable information generation in real-time that would match close to human intelligence at certain tasks at the edge. AI 2.0 would model emergent behavior accurately, which is not possible currently with DL and ML technologies.” said Dr. Nagendra Nagaraja.

He further added that this would allow for more precise modeling of megastructures such as pandemic transmission, economies, transportation networks, advanced metaverse applications, and advanced manufacturing.

Qpisemi’s new AI 2.0 processor that has been codenamed AI20PXX will be a hundred times faster than traditional GPUs used in datacenters. The processor is intended for automotive and metaverse applications, featuring teraflops operations to enable fully autonomous vehicles, as well as an AI 2.0 technological foundation.

Director and Co-founder of Qpisemi, Pinakin Padalia, said, “long with discrete cryo electronics, which is getting taped out in 2022, we hope to have a working chip for AI20P and also Quantum secure CPU ‘Prakhar’ at test chip and simulations levels respectively this year.”

He also mentioned that this year, they plan to construct high-quality R&D and commercial development teams at Qpisemi in preparation for their product launch in 2023-25.

T-AIM invites Applications from AI Startups for Revv Up Acceleration Program

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Dipayan Mitra

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February 3, 2022

T-AIM Applications AI Startups Revv Up Acceleration Program

The Telangana AI Mission (T-AIM) has begun accepting applications from early-stage AI startups as a part of the second cohort of the Revv Up acceleration program.

The artificial intelligence accelerator program named Revv Up was jointly launched by the Telangana government and NASSCOM last year as a part of the state’s ‘2020 Year of AI’ initiative.

With this program, the government aims to make Telangana a global hub for artificial intelligence. The initiative is aimed towards AI startups from any industry based in Telangana or startups which want to open a facility there.

This Accelerator program allows startups and the government to collaborate on developing solutions to complicated business problems. Selected startups are also given assistance from the government and industry in order to expand their operations.

Principal Secretary, Government of Telangana, Jayesh Ranjan, said, “The Revv Up Up accelerator is now synonymous with innovative and impactful solutions to solve real-world problems. Through T-AIM, the Govt. of Telangana is committed to providing a conducive ecosystem for AI startups.”

He further added that Telangana welcomes startups from various parts of the country to apply for this AI accelerator program. Last year 42 startups were selected under the Revv Up program to let them work alongside the government. Selected startups also received help from the government and industry to set up their business on a larger scale.

The Revv Up program has allowed more than 20 startups to expand into the American market with the help of T-AIM’s partner organizations. Now that Revv Up is calling for applications for its second phase, interested startups can submit their form from the official website of Revv Up.

Atlassian acquires Percept.AI, a U.S. based AI chatbot vendor

By

Osheen Jain

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February 2, 2022

Atlassian Corporation Plc, an Australian software giant, is a leading provider of productivity and team collaboration software and the maker of Confluence, Jira Software, Bitbucket, and Trello software. Atlassian acquires Percept.AI, a US-based artificial intelligence company specializing in virtual agent technology powered by natural language processing.

Percept.AI’s platform helps companies and teams automate their tier-1 support interactions via multiple channels like email, chat, web, and portal. Percept.AI’s acquisition will help Atlassian to better understand the context behind a support query. The conversational AI engine analyses and understands the sentiment, context, intent, and profile information to personalize interactions.

Ahead of today’s acquisition, Percept.AI raised a seed round funding of undisclosed sum from companies like Builders VC, Cherubic Ventures, Tribe Capital, Hike Ventures, etc.

Edwin Wong, Head of Product Management for Jira Service Management, said that integrating Percept.AI with Jira Service Management will help the Atlassian support team deliver services faster and at scale. It’ll also create a unified platform for seamless chat-based conversations between customers and agents.

Over the past several years, Atlassian has been investing in solutions that help build predictive, smart experiences into its products. It previously acquired Halp, Think Tilt, and Mindville to improve the functionality of its Jira Service Management software.

The acquisition of Percept.AI, along with previous investments in AI and machine learning-based software, will help Atlassian enhance the efficiency of the Jira management system and provide an excellent customer support experience to its users.

Introducing Voice NFTs: World’s first collection gets sold out in 10 minutes

By

Preetipadma K

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February 2, 2022

On January 29th, the world’s first voice NFTs, offered by Voiceverse, went on sale with 8,888 NFTs. In a highly rare occurrence for NFT collections stored on the Ethereum blockchain, the collection title ‘Voiceverse Origins’ got sold out in less than 10 minutes after being on sale to the general public.

Voiceverse, founded by three BAYC (Bored Ape Yacht Club) members, aims to lead the NFT space into the next generation of high intrinsic value NFTs, allowing holders to possess a voice in the metaverse. People can now add a voice to their Profile Picture (PFP) NFTs with Voice NFTs, giving them a new level of personalization and pseudonymity. Voiceverse further claims that, contrary to popular belief, Voice NFTs will disrupt the business by providing a new stream of possibilities for Voice Actors.

Holders of verbal NFTs can use their voices in a variety of metaverse settings, including games, video calls, and other social media. They can also mint a voice NFT using their own voice or, with explicit permission, the voices of those they near and dear. Owners can even generate a new NFT by combining different voice NFTs. Users can also give their existing PFP NFTs a new life by adding voices to them.

LOVO, the parent company of Voiceverse, is headquartered in San Francisco and Seoul and starts in the AI Speech Synthesis space. Many celebrity voice actors have already collaborated with the venture capital-backed startup to make Voice NFT project. Voiceverse promises the actors that lent their voices to Voice NFTs would get royalties.

Voiceverse Origins sold out in 10 minutes after a week of pre-sale and has been trending across all categories on OpenSea. It has also consistently ranked in the top ten in terms of sales volume (by count). Voiceverse, with its background in AI and speech synthesis, is poised to disrupt the industry and kickstart a trend toward second-generation NFTs.

While the mass-market potential of NFTs is yet to be unfolded, the introduction of Voice NFTs after recent trend of iNFTs does bring a new dimension to the NFTs bubble. Meanwhile, proponents of metaverse believe that blockchain-based products will completely dominate the technology hype in the coming years. As NFTs are slowly finding application and adoption in IoT, healthcare, smart city projects, the advent of voice NFTs can unlock new opportunities.

Indian Government announces to Launch Digital Rupee From RBI

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Dipayan Mitra

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February 2, 2022

The government of India announces its plans to launch its new Digital Rupee, a central bank digital currency (CBDC) from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), in 2022-2023. India has become one of the few countries to announce the launch of an official digital currency.

The groundbreaking announcement was made by India’s Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman while presenting the country’s new budget yesterday. CBDC is a digital form of legal money issued by central banks, similar to a currency issued in paper.

According to the announcement, the new Digital Rupee will be based on blockchain technology like other cryptocurrencies. Although, an official name for digital currency is yet to be decided. This new development is a bold move to support the government’s Digital India initiative.

Nirmala Sitharaman said, “The introduction of central bank digital currency will give a big boost to the digital economy. Digital currency will also be a more cheaper and efficient currency management system.”

She further added that as a result, it is recommended that the Reserve Bank of India create a Digital Rupee based on blockchain and other technologies, beginning in 2022-23. However, the newly announced Digital Rupee will be different from mainstream cryptos like Bitcoin, which are decentralized.

The minister then explained that the Digital Rupee would be regulated differently than other digital assets and cryptocurrencies. In comparison to the current digital payment experience, a benefit of the Digital Rupee is that transactions will be immediate.

Apart from India, nine other countries, including Nigeria and the Eastern Caribbean, have officially launched their digital currencies.

“Taking forward this agenda, and to mark 75 years of Independence, it’s proposed to set up 75 digital banking units in 75 districts of the country by scheduled commercial banks. The financial support for the digital payment ecosystem – announced in the previous budget – will continue in 2022-23 as well,” added Sitharaman.

Diem Shuts Down and Confirms Asset Sale to Silvergate

By

Osheen Jain

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February 2, 2022

Diem Shuts Down and Confirms Asset Sale to Silvergate

After multiple congressional hearings, rebrands, and several high-profile staff departures, Diem, the cryptocurrency project Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, is finally calling it quits. Diem Association has announced its sale of intellectual property and other assets to Silvergate Capital Corp.

The cryptocurrency initiative was initially known as Libra. When it was launched in 2019, Facebook planned to use stablecoins, stable-value digital currencies to revolutionize global financial services. Libra originally had several dozen partners, but many of them left soon after the congress and other regulatory boards began to scrutinize it. The Libra project was eventually rebranded to Diem in an ambition to scale back.

Facebook, now Meta Platforms Inc., started Diem to make payments and money transfers cheaper and faster. However, Diem never got off the ground because of resistance from federal regulators.

Diem was considering selling its assets to return capital to its investors. But now, Diem will sell its assets to Silvergate for about $200 million. Silvergate is a crypto-focused bank working on launching a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar.

The decision to sell Diem to Silvergate was made after it “became clear from our dialogue with federal regulators that the project could not move ahead,” Stuart Levey, Diem CEO, said in a press release.

There’s always the chance that Silvergate or another player revives Diem because Diem’s design was more transparent and regulator-friendly than a lot of existing stablecoins. However, with its founder, David Marcus, and most of Libra’s founding team gone from Meta, the odds of Diem ever reemerging with the same level of backing seems slim.

Clearview AI receives US Patent for its Facial Recognition Platform

By

Dipayan Mitra

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February 2, 2022

Clearview AI US Patent Facial Recognition

Artificial intelligence-powered facial recognition system developing company Clearview Ai receives a U.S. patent for its revolutionary face recognition platform. The technology was tested in the National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST) Facial Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT), where it showed outstanding performance.

The “Methods for Providing Information About a Person Based on Facial Recognition” patent, U.S. Patent No. 11,250,266, is the first facial recognition system of its kind to receive a patent in the United States.

The highly capable platform developed by Clearview AI uses data from publicly available sources and accurately matches similar photos using its proprietary artificial intelligence-powered facial recognition algorithm.

CEO and Co-founder of Clearview AI, Hoan Ton-That, said, “This distinction is more than an intellectual property protection; it is a clear acknowledgment of Clearview AI’s technological innovation in the artificial intelligence industry.”

The announcement was made in December 2021 by Clearview AIthat it will soon be awarded a U.S. patent for its one-of-a-kind facial recognition system. The patent will allow other organizations to use Clearview AI’s technology after paying the required fee.

Clearview AI received patent protection as its technology acquires information from the public internet and its facial recognition capabilities. New York-based technology company Clearview AI was founded by Hoan Ton-That and Richard Schwartz in 2017.

The firm specializes in providing a research tool primarily used by several law enforcement agencies to identify perpetrators and victims of crimes. To date, Clearview AI has raised more than $38 million over three funding rounds from investors like Kirenaga Partners, Hal Lambert, and many more.

Though, the company has been involved in several controversies in the past regarding its practices that violate the privacy of individuals. It has managed to get its patent, allowing Clearview AI to expand further.

Cruise raises $1.35 billion from SoftBank’s Vision Funds

By

Dipayan Mitra

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February 2, 2022

Self-driving vehicles developing company Cruise raises $1.35 billion from SoftBank’s Vision Fund in an unknown funding round series. According to Cruise, it plans to use the fresh funds to quickly scale its self-driving technology in San Francisco and expand into other locations.

The investment comes while the company is making arrangements to launch its robotaxi service in the United States. SoftBank had earlier invested $900 million in GM’s majority-owned subsidiary, Cruise, and has promised to invest more when its autonomous vehicles get ready for commercial deployment.

Initially, the public launch of its autonomous vehicles was planned to be held in 2019, but it got delayed due to several factors. Cruise has been providing ride-hailing services to its employees for many years in San Francisco.

Apart from SoftBank, Cruise has received financial support from multiple other investors like Honda and Microsoft. Chief Executive of General Motors, Mary Barra, said, “There is still so much that can be accomplished with a frictionless environment between Cruise and GM.”

She further added that Cruise is not seeking to raise more funds from the capital markets in the near term. Interested customers can visit the official website of Cruise and sign up to join the waiting list for enjoying Cruise’s services in San Francisco.

Co-founder and CEO of Cruise, Kyle Vogt, said regarding the ride experience, “Most people experience childlike delight during the first ride, but then the ride quickly becomes boring. One of them even fell asleep.”

United States-based self-driving car developer Cruise was founded by Daniel Kan, Jeremy Guillory, and Kyle Vogt in 2013. Cruise believes that the best way to bring autonomous driving technology to the world is by exposing it to the same unique and complex traffic scenarios that human drivers face every day.

General Motors, one of the largest automobile manufacturers in the world, acquired Cruise back in 2016 to expand GM’s autonomous vehicle technology.