Author: PTI
Google CEO Sundar Pichai thanked Elon Musk’s SpaceX for launching their first FireSat satellite over the weekend. FireSat is a satellite project by Google, built to detect and track wildfires before they start spreading. Pichai posted an image of the satellite on the launch pad before takeoff on X saying, “We have liftoff! After a successful launch this weekend, the first FireSat satellite is now orbiting Earth. It’s the first of a 50+ satellite constellation that will help detect + track wildfires as small as 5×5 meters, using AI. Huge thanks to partners MuonSpace, EarthFireAll, MooreFound, and special thanks to SpaceX for the ride!” Once the full constellation…
The National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) on Monday decided to wait and see if the central government notifies the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Rules before proceeding with the appeals filed by Meta and WhatsApp against a 2024 order of the Competition Commission of India (CCI) that imposed ₹213.14 crore penalty on Meta for abuse of dominance. Along with the penalty, CCI had prohibited WhatsApp from sharing user data with Meta for a period of five years. Meta and WhatsApp challenged this order before NCLAT, which in January 2025 granted a partial stay on both the financial penalty and the…
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Indian government are deepening their collaboration across key sectors, including agriculture, rural development, food security, artificial intelligence, and technology exchange, minister for agriculture and farmers welfare Shivraj Singh Chouhan announced after meeting Bill Gates in New Delhi today. The partnership builds on the Foundation’s existing work in India, which includes initiatives in digital agriculture, biotechnology, and climate-resilient farming. “Today, many important issues were discussed with Bill Gates and his team,” Chouhan said, noting that the Gates Foundation shares global best practices in agriculture and rural development while working to uplift communities. He…
Ride-hailing giant Uber is in the early stages of talks to acquire BluSmart, an electric vehicle-based cab service company, as its parent company, Gensol Engineering, is looking to exit the capital-intensive business, sources told Moneycontrol. The talks come in as BluSmart’s parent company Gensol Engineering is facing liquidity issues. BluSmart has denied holding such a discussion with Uber. “BluSmart categorically denies any discussions or negotiations regarding an acquisition by Uber. The report suggesting such a development is entirely speculative and unfounded. As India’s leading EV ride-hailing and charging infrastructure platform, BluSmart remains focused on scaling its operations, expanding its footprint,…
In light of recent Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) raids at several warehouses of major e-commerce platforms like Amazon and Flipkart, Amazon has reiterated its commitment to maintaining industry standards and regulatory compliance. BIS conducted search and seizure operations in cities including Lucknow, Gurugram, and Delhi, revealing non-certified products on the platforms. “We require sellers of all products to comply with applicable laws, regulations and Amazon policies. We ensure our selection meets industry-accepted standards, and we develop innovative tools to prevent unsafe products from being listed,” Amazon said in an official statement, responding to the growing concerns. “We take actions…
The U.S. Internal Revenue Service is taking a “strategic pause” in its technology modernization investments to re-evaluate its operating approach in light of new artificial intelligence technologies, a senior IRS career technology official said on Friday. The agency will review a number of technology modernization initiatives that have been taken in recent years, including the new Direct File free filing system for tax returns that was launched last year under the Biden administration, the official told reporters.As the Trump administration prepares a second wave of mass firings at federal government agencies, a person familiar with IRS plans told Reuters that the tax…
State Bank of India, the country’s largest lender, is setting up a unit to manage project financing solutions for “new age industries” such as artificial intelligence, e-commerce, and fintech, according to a senior executive.The public sector bank plans to complete the project within a year and will hire “specialized professionals” to staff it, said Ashwini Kumar Tewari, a managing director at the bank. It’s also in the process of appointing an external consultant, Tewari said.The project will help diversify the work of the bank’s project finance and structuring unit, which appraises, structures and funds large projects in infrastructure. Lending to…
Alphabet’s Google launched two new AI models tailored for robotics applications on Wednesday based on its Gemini 2.0 model, as it looks to cater to the rapidly growing robotics industry. The robotics field has made large strides over the past few years with increasing advancements in AI and improving models, speeding up commercialisation of robots largely in industrial settings, according to industry experts. Google’s launch comes a month after robotics startup Figure AI exited its collaboration agreement with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI after it made an internal breakthrough in AI for robots. The search engine giant’s Gemini Robotics is an advanced vision-language-action…
The MSME industry body India SME Forum on Wednesday called for reduced data compliance for micro, small and medium enterprises that rely on third-party advertising and data analytics as the country’s data protection laws take shape.After startups’ resistance to the high cost of compliance with data protection laws, it’s the turn of small and medium businesses to raise concerns about the restrictive impact of these laws.India SME Forum surveyed over a thousand small and micro firms and concluded that heightened compliance related to consumer data would be detrimental to the sector, which relies heavily on digital tools for business expansion,…
Alphabet’s Google launched two new AI models tailored for robotics applications on Wednesday based on its Gemini 2.0 model, as it looks to cater to the rapidly growing robotics industry. The robotics field has made large strides over the past few years with increasing advancements in AI and improving models, speeding up commercialization of robots largely in industrial settings, according to industry experts.Google’s launch comes a month after robotics startup Figure AI exited its collaboration agreement with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI after it made an internal breakthrough in AI for robots. The search engine giant’s Gemini Robotics is an advanced vision-language-action model that will…