It’s a wrap: News this week (Nov 25 — Dec 1)

There have been multiple developments this week on the tech front. From HPE and AWS’ annual events to India’s IT spending, this is the list of the most important developments for a quick catch-up:

HPE Discover 2023 event    

At the annual HPE Discover event in Barcelona on Thursday, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) made several new and enhanced artificial intelligence (AI) and hybrid cloud announcements. These include storage, digital twins solution, and an extended collaboration with Nvidia for AI tuning. The goal is to allow enterprises to optimise generative AI model development and implementation.

“AI is exploding,” said CEO Antonio Neri during the company’s keynote. HPE reported a 37% increase in high-performance computing and AI to $1.2 billion for its fourth fiscal quarter, which ended on October 31. Neri also mentioned that HPE added $600 million in incremental AI orders in the last few weeks alone. 

AWS re:Invent 2023

Amazon Web Services (AWS) commenced its annual AWS re:Invent event in Las Vegas on November 28, featuring a rapid succession of announcements, primarily centred around advancements in its signature platform. The nearly 2.5-hour keynote by AWS CEO Adam Selipsky focused predominantly on artificial intelligence (AI) developments. One of the main highlights was the launch of an AI chatbot called Amazon Q. It is deeply integrated across various cloud services like Amazon CodeWhisper and Amazon Connect.

ChatGPT’s first anniversary

This week, OpenAI’s ChatGPT completed a year of existence. Launched in November 2022, the smart chatbot has significantly impacted the AI landscape and has jolted the entire tech industry. It is also the application to get a high number of users in record time. 

Notably, last week ChatGPT’s parent organisation was in news in the sudden firing and subsequent re-appointment of Sam Altman as the CEO. In a span of less than a week, the company saw four change of heads.

More semiconductor fabs

India may get three more semiconductor chip fabrication technology units in the next few months, said Ashwini Vaishnaw, Union Minister for electronics and information technology. He added that the cumulative investment will be to tune of $8-12 billion, during an interaction with media. 

Vaishnaw was speaking at Bengaluru on the sidelines of semiconductor company AMD’s inauguration of its largest global design centre in India. While he did not reveal the names of the companies, he said that talks are ongoing with the governments of states like Karnataka, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, etc. for setting up the units.

India IT spending

India IT spending is projected to total $124.6 billion in 2024, an increase of 10.7% from 2023, according to the latest forecast by Gartner.
 
While investments in AI and generative AI (GenAI) will contribute to IT spending growth in India, their impacts on IT spending levels will not be evident until 2025. “GenAI will account for a small portion of IT spending through 2024,” said Naveen Mishra, VP, Team Manager at Gartner.

“Indian organisations are expected to make investments in AI and automation during this time, as a strategic effort to improve operational efficiency and address the ongoing shortage of IT talent. However, it is not until 2025 that GenAI will begin to carve its place in IT budgeting amongst Indian organisations.”