It’s a wrap: News this week (June 24-June 30)

There have been multiple developments on the tech front this week. From IBM’s new acquisition to the Google I/O Connect event in Bengaluru, this is the list of the most important developments this week for a quick catch-up:

Google I/O Connect in Bengaluru

At the Google I/O Connect event held in Bengaluru this week, the company made a lot of announcements targeting Indian developers. Among the most significant announcements was making PaLM API and Makersuite available in India. Using these APIs, developers will be able to access to state of the art generative AI models.

Google also said that it will be open-sourcing the first set of speech data under Project Vaani, which comprises over 4,000 hours in 38 languages. Project Vaani has been created through a collaboration with the Indian Institute of Science. Launched last year, the project seeks to create a data corpus of more than 150,000 hours of speech in different languages.

Further, to facilitate easy onboarding of companies in the Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC), Google open-sourced the ready implementation of ONDC infrastructure and core APIs for access to retail AI technology and PaLM API.  The big tech also announced the launch of ONDC accelerator program under which eligible companies will get a grant of $25,000.

Meta’s mixed reality fund

Meta announced a new mixed reality (MR) programme that offers a grant of $250,000 for Indian startups and developers to build apps and experiences. The fund will help select five candidates to build apps using Meta’s Presence Platform — the company’s broad range of machine perception and AI capabilities for the Meta Quest Platform and metaverse. They will also have an opportunity to upload their product to Quest App Lab and become part of Meta’s growing developer ecosystem, Meta said in a statement. 

Nasscom launches UK launchpad

Industry body Nasscom signed a memorandum of Manchester’s Inward Investment Agency (MIDAS) and Manchester Airports Group (MAG) to allow Indian tech small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to enter the UK market and grow their business.

This Nasscom launchpad in the UK will be established in Greater Manchester similar to its first launchpad program in Canada set up in March this year to help Indian tech firms expand their businesses and trade in the North American market.

IBM acquires Appitio

IBM has announced the acquisition of cloud software company Apptio from private equity (PE) firm Vista Equity Partners for $4.6 billion. The company also said that the acquisition is expected to close in the second half of 2023, pending regulatory approvals. IBM said in a press release that Apptio will help IBM advance its application management, optimisation, and observability offerings. 

Airtel-Alphabet’s internet access project

Sunil Mittal-led Bharti Airtel has teamed up with Google’s parent, Alphabet to provide high-speed internet access to remote villages in India by using beams of light or laser-based technologies, the companies said on Tuesday. The project, known as Taara, is part of Alphabet's innovation lab called X. 

While the pilot was tested in Andhra Pradesh and Africa, the large-scale deployment in India will happen via partnership with Airtel.