It’s a wrap: News this week (June 22 – June 28)

There have been multiple developments this week on the tech front. From datacenter expansion to Meta AI in India, this is the list of the most important developments for a quick catch-up:

Mergers of the week

On Friday, Wipro announced the completion of the merger of its step-down subsidiary, Designit North America, Inc., with Wipro Designit Services, Inc. This merger becomes effective on July 1. In addition to the North American consolidation, Wipro has deregistered its Australian subsidiary, Attune Australia Pty Ltd, effective from June 26. The company stated that these moves are part of a strategic effort to rationalise and consolidate its group structure.

Further, another Indian IT services giant Tech Mahindra announced the merger of the wholly-owned step-down subsidiary Heathnxt Inc. with its parent company Tech Mahindra (Americas) (or TMA) with approval from respective companies on Tuesday. 

CtrlS Datacenter in Kolkata

CtrlS Datacenters Ltd has unveiled plans to invest ₹2,200 crore in a major expansion in Kolkata. With over 250 MW of live datacenter capacity across eight major markets in India, the company aims to establish a comprehensive ecosystem of artificial intelligence (AI)-ready datacenters and an advanced network connectivity system to serve enterprises, government, and hyperscalers in the region. The expansion will focus on developing a greenfield datacenter campus in Kolkata's New Town area.

Equinix expands to Chennai

Equinix, a digital infrastructure company, announced on Tuesday that it will establish its first International Business Exchange (IBX) datacenter in Chennai. The datacenter, named CN1, will cover nearly six acres of land and have a total site capacity of 4,950 cabinets or around 25 megawatts of power when fully constructed, with an initial investment of $65 million. CN1 will be situated in the State Industries Promotion Corporation of Tamil Nadu Ltd.

SN Subrahmanya is the new LTIMindtree chairman

IT services firm LTIMindtree has appointed SN Subrahmanyan as the Chairman effective June 27. Subrahmanyan succeeds AM Naik who has now decided to step down from the post.

"The Board of Directors at its meeting held today has approved the appointment of SN Subrahmanyan, non-executive vice-chairman, as the non-executive chairman of the company with effect from June 27," the company said in an exchange filing.

Tech Mahindra partners with Dell, Intel for Project Indus

Tech Mahindra launched its artificial intelligence initiative Project Indus on Friday. In Beta from December 2023, Project Indus is a bid by the IT services company to primarily build its own foundational large language model (LLM) tailored for Indic languages and dialects. The company has leveraged partnerships with Dell and Intel to build this platform. 

Indus LLM will be implemented using Dell Technologies’ computing solutions, storage, and networking capabilities. Additionally, the LLM adopts Intel-based infrastructure solutions and AI accelerator Gaudi. 

Meta launches AI assistant in India

Facebook-parent Meta has announced the launch of its AI in India. Meta AI, first unveiled in 2023 at the annual Connect event, is now rolled out in English in India. Meta AI can be leveraged across WhatsApp, Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram for tasks such as question-answers, writing text, generating images from text, etc.

To be sure, as per the latest update in April, Meta introduced the upgraded version of Meta AI, built with its large language model Llama 3. At the time of this announcement, the feature was made available in countries such as Australia, Canada, Ghana, Jamaica, Malawi, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Singapore, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.