Others

QIA invests $1 billion in Ambani’s Reliance Retail at $100 billion valuation

August 23, 2023
QIA, Qatar’s sovereign fund, will invest $1 billion in Reliance Retail for a 1% stake in India’s largest retail chain, the two firms said Wednesday. The investment values Reliance Retail, part of Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries, at $100 billion. Reliance Retail — which operates 18.500 stores and digital commerce platforms, selling everything from electronics to […]

A cell that does it all

August 23, 2023
From “The Troubled Hunt for the Ultimate Cell” (1998), by Antonio Regalado: “If awards were given for the most intriguing, controversial, underfunded and hush-hush of scientific pursuits, the search for the human embryonic stem (ES) cell would likely sweep the categories. It’s a hunt for the tabula rasa of human cells—a cell that has the…

Hackers exploit WinRAR zero-day bug to steal funds from broker accounts

August 23, 2023
Cybercriminals are exploiting a zero-day vulnerability in WinRAR, the venerable shareware archiving tool for Windows, to target traders and steal funds. Cybersecurity company Group-IB discovered the vulnerability, which affects the processing of the ZIP file format by WinRAR, in June. The zero-day flaw — meaning the vendor had no time, or zero days, to fix […]

Jobs platform CakeResume gets $5 million in fresh funding

August 23, 2023
CakeResume, used by tech companies like Google, Nvidia and TSMC to find new talent, announced today it has raised $5 million in Series A funding. The round was led by returning investor Mynavi, one of Japan’s largest human resources companies, and will be used to expand in countries like Indonesia, Vietnam and India. Based in […]

Dice books $65M for its event discovery and ticketing platform

August 23, 2023
Live, in-person activity has come back with force in the wake of years of living with Covid-19, and a London startup that built an events tech business is today announcing funding to capitalise on that. Dice, an events discovery and ticketing platform, has raised $65 million, funding that it will be using to grow in […]

Meta plans to roll out default end-to-end encryption for Messenger by the end of the year

August 23, 2023
Meta said today that the company plans to enable end-to-end encryption by default for Messenger by the end of this year. The tech giant is also expanding its test of end-to-end encryption features to “millions more people’s chats.” The company has been building end-to-end encryption features in Messenger for years now. However, most of them […]

Snap overhauls India organizational structure, appoints new head

August 23, 2023
Snap has restructured its reporting system in India and named Pulkit Trivedi as the new country head, underscoring the increasing importance of the South Asian market to the company. Snapchat’s parent company will now have its Indian team report directly to Trivedi, giving India leadership more autonomy over the local growth, partnership and market development […]

India’s Kombai raises $4.5M to simplify UI coding with AI

August 23, 2023
Kombai, a startup that aims to help front-end developers easily convert UI designs to code using AI, has emerged from stealth and announced a $4.5 million in a seed funding round led by Stellaris Venture Partners and Foundation Capital. In response to rapid hardware advancements, software evolution has underscored a pressing need for superior user […]

Solar AI wants to make solar power more accessible in Southeast Asia

August 23, 2023
High energy prices are leading to a solar boom across the world, but in Singapore, many home owners are still hesitant to install solar panels because of the high cost, says Bolong Chew, the founder of Solar AI Technologies. The startup wants to make solar energy more accessible in Southeast Asia with a rent-to-own model […]

MrBeast’s Olympics video is a geopolitical nightmare

August 23, 2023
MrBeast stumbled into the heated discourse of global affairs in his latest stunt. The billionaire creator inadvertently stoked generations of geopolitical tension in his latest YouTube video, in which participants from “every country on Earth” competed in “Squid Game”-like elimination challenges for a chance to win $250,000. “Behind me is one person from every country […]