Newsletter
All things AI, Masa in India, and Linkedin Layoffs.
☀️ Morning, its Thursday.
🦃 The S&P crawled back a tiny bit, as U.S. investors headed into Thanksgiving.
📈 The Sensex started Wednesday soft, but finished the day comfortably over 80,000.
Let’s hit it!
1 Big Thing: Udupi-based venture acquired ☁️
One of Japan’s largest IT-players, NTT DATA, acquired Niveus Solutions—a Udupi-Karnataka based cloud services provider, which will now help beef up NTT’s cloud consulting business.
The details: the acquisition will bring ~1,000 engineers specializing in the Google Cloud Platform under NTT's fold. This move will enhance NTT's capabilities in cloud modernization, data engineering, and AI consulting.
The big trend: tech consulting is having a moment as a wide range of global enterprises rush to integrate Gen AI solutions across their IT stack. Accenture recently said their Gen AI bookings pipeline is at $3 billion.
Worth noting: this is the second time a Japanese giant is buying a company based in Udupi. In August 2021, Robosoft was bought by TechnoPro for ₹805 crore. It’s the coastal vibe.
Deals like this also validate the tech ecosystem outside of major metros.
Zoom out: global spending on cloud computing is expected to reach $675 billion in 2024, and top $1 trillion by 2027, making this a major growth area for consulting giants, including TCS, Infosys, and the rest.
2. Masa in India 💰
Legendary investor and Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son, backer of the brave, made a whirlwind trip to India this week.
At a lunch meeting with portfolio founders in New Delhi, Masa delivered a clear message: the future belongs to those who master AI. He also reaffirmed Softbank’s continued interest in being part of the India story.
Victory lap: SoftBank is riding high on many of it’s India bets working out remarkably well, thanks to the India-IPO investor and his appetite for equity. Powered by those gains, the firm delivered a yugee $7.7 billion profit last quarter.
Zoom out: in the last 10 years, Masa deployed nearly $14 billion in India. And there’s more Softbank IPOs in the pipeline for 2025—including Masa’s personal favorite, Oyo, and may be even Meesho.
There’s more: Son reportedly also met with RIL’s Mukesh Ambani and is scheduled to meet PM Modi this week.
3. AI wars are heating up 🔥
Been all about AI for the last 24 months anyway, but this week, on the second birthday of ChatGPT, there’s a couple notable moves worth digesting:
🔫 Sora leak shakes OpenAI: A vigilante group leaked access to OpenAI's upcoming video generator, Sora, in protest against alleged "art-washing". The incident adds more fuel to ongoing controversies and disputes over Open AI’s model training sources as well as the negative impact on the creative industry.
🔥 Amazon doubled down on Anthropic: Amazon injected another $4 billion into Anthropic, its preferred AI partner, doubling it’s capital infusion into the company to an eye popping $8 billion. Anthropic's models will be distributed on Amazon Web Services, just like how Open AI’s are distributed on Microsoft.
Game shifting so fast, you blink, you miss.
4. Who got the bag? 💰
True Diamond, a lab-grown diamond startup based in Mumbai, was seeded with $1 million by Titan Capital.
The hype: founded in Jan this year, this would be the first round for the company, which offers a catalogue of 5,000 customizable designs, as well as a wide list of jewelry pieces.
Big picture: the global lab-grown diamond market is expected to reach $50 billion by 2030, as young buyers display shifting preferences.
While we are on raises 💸
ParkMate, a provider of car parking solutions, has raised $1.2 million in a new round led by Cactus Partners.
ParkMate offers managed parking solutions to malls, office complexes, hotels, and government spaces. Customers and users of these spaces get valet-like Drop & Shop service, guaranteeing parking within 2 minutes.
What else are we snackin’ 🍿
🚗 Subscription cabs: Uber rolled out 'Uber One' loyalty program in India, offering monthly and annual plans with credits that can be redeemed on future rides and deliveries.
🛵 Instamart leads: Analysts at JP Morgan say Swiggy's Instamart has the fastest quick delivery service on average in India, against competitors.
✂️ Downsizing: LinkedIn has laid off around 200 employees, about 1% of its workforce in India, as part of broader cost-cutting measures.
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