The Associated Press was given rare access to the operations earlier this year as part of an investigation into the proliferation of artificial intelligence tools used by law enforcement around the world.
Amazon reaches settlement in three EU antitrust cases, avoids fine
Amazon has agreed to set up a second prominently displayed buy box for a rival product if it differs substantially in price and delivery from the product in the first box.
Subsidies for renewable energy, electric vehicles more than doubled in FY 2022: Report
This rise is the result of greater policy stability, a 155 percent jump in the installation of solar photovoltaic, and the post-Covid economic resurgence, the study found.
India probes possible misappropriation of incentives by EV makers
Mahendra Nath Pandey, the minister for heavy industries, said complaints were made against 12 electric vehicle and parts manufacturers, including Hero Electric Vehicles Pvt Ltd and Okinawa Autotech Pvt Ltd, for violating guidelines under the programme.
Vedanta announces incentives for purchase of EVs by employees
The incentives would be given to various employee grades for the purchase of four- and two-wheel electric vehicles (EVs), it said.
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Terrestrial QKD systems have the limitation of requiring repeaters every 100–150 km, which is a big hindrance in creating a large-scale Quantum Secure Network, it was noted.
Kredito banks $6M as the LatAm business lender eyes international expansion
Over a year after grabbing $4 million in pre-seed funding, Chile-based Kredito, a business lending startup, is back with another $6 million in new funding.
The company launched to the public in 2021 and partners with financial institutions to help small businesses with their spend management, access digital unsecured loans, open a bank account and obtain a business credit card.
When we profiled Kredito last year, Sebastian Robles, co-founder and CEO, told TechCrunch that business credit didn’t automatically come with an account, leaving business owners to use personal credit cards.
“Everyone wants to sell online, so e-commerce capabilities are key,” he told TechCrunch recently. “Most of our customers are moving online, but what’s happened is that banks are more restricted with their products, making it harder for the unbanked or the underbanked to access decent financial services or sometimes even a bank account.”
Instead, Kredito takes on that risk by using a proprietary algorithm and alternative data to evaluate credit risk more inclusively than traditional banks, and in real time, Robles said. It also created products with few requirements so that it could reduce the cost of acquisition and gather data from customers on how best to help them access financial products. For example, the account and corporate card can be used by anyone, while the loan product is accessible to those who qualify and share data with Kredito, Robles said.
Including the new equity funding round — Robles is still finalizing a debt round — the company has raised $11.5 million in equity and debt so far. The new capital came from a group of angel investors and family offices, including Cornershop by Uber founders, Oskar Hjertonsson and Daniel Undurraga, and various partners from real estate developer Patio.
Robles wasn’t necessarily planning to go after new capital this soon, but said Kredito was growing faster than expected. He has run the company very lean, but needed to add to the small team to meet growth.
The company has about 100,000 accounts and approximately 5,000 active users and is seeing 90% revenue growth month over month, he said. It is focused on maintaining that growth throughout the next year as it continues to open thousands of new accounts each month.
Robles intends to use the new capital to expand into new countries and consolidate its growth in Chile. Exporting Kredito’s product — making sure what it does in Chile it can do in other countries — will be key, he said. As such, the company will work first on its underwriting by accessing data in multiple countries and replicating its strategies.
“Internationalization is the main focus,” he added. “We have a lot of work to do. We have made a lot of progress in the underwriting and the loans, and now we have to do the same with other products. Locally, we will focus on growth. We already have product market fit and a lot of traction, and now we want to grow more.”
Kredito banks $6M as the LatAm business lender eyes international expansion by Christine Hall originally published on TechCrunch
US Navy awards Amazon Web Services contract worth over $700 million
The deal will provide the Navy with access to Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) commercial cloud environment, Professional Services, and its training and certification courses.
Meta Reality Labs puts 'about half' of operating expenses into AR
For it to work properly, the headset needs to understand the users’ room as a 3D space by recognising the surfaces and objects around them and how they can interact with digital objects.
Amazon quietly launches Prime Gaming in India
Amazon has quietly rolled out Prime Gaming, its subscription service that offers access to a number of titles, to its members in India weeks after it started testing the service in the South Asian market.
The gaming service, complimentary to Amazon Prime and Video subscribers, offers users access to a range of mobile, PC and Mac games as well as in-game loot at no additional cost. Each month, the e-commerce group adds a number of new titles to the service.
At the time of writing, some of the free games and their loot boxes available to users in India include League of Legends, DeathLoop, Quake, COD Season 1, EA Madden 23, FIFA 23, Apex Legends, Destiny 2, and Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons.
Prime Gaming home page in India. (Image: TechCrunch)
Prime Gaming makes Amazon Prime subscription, which costs just $18 a year in India, even more enticing for a certain demographic in the South Asian market. It can also have some “fascinating long-term impact” for PC gaming ecosystem in India, said Rishi Alwani, a long-time industry analyst and communications manager at Pune-headquartered gaming upstart SuperGaming
“It would expose Indian PC gamers with Prime subscriptions to a variety of content they would not necessarily have gravitated towards. By and large, the Indian PC games space is value-driven permeated by either big budget ‘safe’ AAA fare like GTA 5 or free-to-play shooters like Valorant. Prime Gaming brings in a varied, curated selection of genres and titles that many may have not even considered to pick up and play otherwise such as Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons,” he told TechCrunch in a text.
“Throw in in-game content for popular titles like Modern Warfare 2 and Apex Legends and it’s pretty obvious that Amazon India’s at that phase where it is looking at gaming to retain its burgeoning Prime subscriber base.”
Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Amazon quietly launches Prime Gaming in India by Manish Singh originally published on TechCrunch