It’s a wrap: News this week (Feb 1 – Feb 7)

There have been multiple developments this week on the tech front. From new deals to DeepSeek’s AI model, here is a list of the most important updates for a quick catch-up:

Deals of the week

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company Perfios has acquired Bengaluru-based fraud detection platform Clari5 (CustomerXPs), a banking financial crime management platform. Clari5’s real-time platform enables banks to detect, investigate, and prevent fraud while offering comprehensive solutions in fraud mitigation, risk management, and anti-money laundering (AML). 

Further, Mumbai-headquartered Veefin Group of Companies (Veefin) which operates in the supply chain finance space, on Tuesday, announced that it has acquired TradeAssets, a UAE-based company specialising in the digital trading of trade finance assets. This acquisition, executed through Veefin’s subsidiary Estorifi Solutions, strengthens the company’s position as a one-stop solution for banks and financial institutions, helping them manage liquidity, distribute risk, and access global markets. This marks Veefin’s fifth acquisition in the past eight months, bringing its total portfolio to ten companies.

Ola Krutrim raises stake, announces major investment

Bhavish Aggarwal, founder and CEO of Ola, on Tuesday, announced an investment of ₹2,000 Crore into its AI unicorn Krutrim, with a commitment of ₹10,000 Crore by next year.

The development comes as China's DeepSeek shook the AI market with its cost-effective yet powerful and open-source AI model. Last week, Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw also revealed that India will develop its generative AI model in less than a year.

Aggarwal also announced the roll out of a frontier artificial intelligence research lab, Krutrim AI lab, just days after Krutrim announced it is hosting open source AI models of Chinese GenAI company DeepSeek on its cloud platform.

DeepSeek catches tech world’s fancy but challenges persist

Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) startup DeepSeek, which has had a meteoric rise in popularity in recent days, has challenged the traditional AI infrastructure by demonstrating that efficiency can match computational power. With just $5.6 million in older GPUs, it showcases the potential of reinforcement learning to train competitive AI models. 

Indian companies like Yotta Data Services have already started rolling out Deepseeek-based services. This week, Hiranandani Group-owned Yotta Data Services launched ‘myShakti’ on Tuesday, marking India’s first fully sovereign B2C generative AI chatbot. Built using DeepSeek’s open-source AI model, myShakti operates entirely on Indian servers at Yotta’s NM1 data centre with complete data security and sovereignty, the company said in a statement. 

That said, Deepseek’s model has been shrouded by security concerns. It is facing crackdowns from several governments, including India, the US, Australia, Taiwan, and South Korea, due to concerns over its security and data practices, particularly on government devices. While most firms are still trying to understand the ramifications of new open-source models like DeepSeek R1, many have also refrained from using the model, citing privacy and security concerns.

AI emerges major driver for Oracle India’s deal bookings

Cloud service provider Oracle’s AI initiatives in the last few years have started to deliver rich dividends, company executives said at a recent media roundtable in Mumbai. In H1, the AI wins contributed about 30% of the bookings for Oracle India. 

“From an Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) standpoint, 30% of our revenues were all driven by AI based customers or AI services that we had acquired,” said Premalakshmi PR , vice president, of Technology Cloud, Oracle India, on the sidelines of Oracle CloudWorld Tour Mumbai.

The company has over 100 AI use cases that have already been introduced in its products. Oracle’s embedded AI capabilities have offered a major competitive advantage and has driven customer adoption, the spokesperson said. Oracle’s AI strategy spans across its infrastructure layer, platform services, databases, and business applications.