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Zara Khan

Zara Khan is a seasoned investigative journalist with a focus on social justice issues. She has won numerous awards for her groundbreaking reporting and has a reputation for fearlessly exposing wrongdoing.

“All You Need to Know: The Latest Updates from Google Cloud Next 2024”

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Don’t have time to catch the Google Cloud Next livestream? Here’s whyNvidia’s Blackwell platformOne of the anticipated announcements is Nvidia’s next-generation Blackwell platform coming to Google Cloud in early 2025. Read moreImagen 2In February, Google announced an image generator built into Gemini, Google’s AI-powered chatbot. Read moreChrome Enterprise PremiumMeanwhile, Google is expanding its Chrome Enterprise product suite with the launch of Chrome Enterprise Premium. This, Kyle Wiggers writes, is “Google’s most capable generative AI model,” and is now available in public preview on Vertex AI, Google’s enterprise-focused AI development platform.

“Expanding Across Asia: TransferGo Secures $10M Funding, Doubles Valuation for Remittance Services”

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It last raised a $50M Series C funding round in 2021. TransferGo claims the new investment doubles its valuation to around $600M, from the $200M-$300M Dealroom valued it at back in September 2021. We achieved sustainability of the business and became profitable and we still have proceeds from the last funding round. We don’t need external capital to grow.”However, he saw the opportunity to raise funding from Asia to expand there. “We are still taking customers from incumbents: 75% come from cash, banks, and Western Union — that’s still the gorilla in the room.”He puts TransferGo’s growth down to focusing on the consumer experience.

“Security Made Simple: Sprinto Secures $20M for Automated Compliance Management”

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Sprinto, a security compliance and risk platform, has raised a $20 million Series B round to build more automation into its compliance management platform and widen its customer base to include the wide gamut of companies that operate digitally but aren’t tech-first. Sprinto is working to automate this aspect of security compliance management, which involves vendor risk management, vulnerability assessment, access control, evidence collection and other filing tasks. Sprinto uses a mix of AI, GPTs and its own internal large language model to offer efficiencies in compliance management. The market for automated compliance management solutions already has players such as Vanta and Drata, which Sprinto considers its key competitors. However, Redekar said Sprinto primarily focuses on automating the entire compliance management process and helping businesses build trust.

Ola, the giant of Indian ride-hailing, withdraws from UK, Australia and NZ in a global retreat

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Indian ride-hailing giant Ola is shutting down its operations in the UK, Australia and New Zealand, six years after expanding to international markets as it shifts focus to shoring up its domestic business ahead of an initial public offering. An Ola spokesperson told TechCrunch that the SoftBank-backed ride-hailing startup sees “immense opportunity for expansion in India,” where it operates in hundreds of cities and offers a range of transportation options, including two-wheelers. “With this clear focus, we’ve reassessed our priorities and have decided to shut down our overseas ride-hailing business in its current form in the UK, Australia and New Zealand,” the spokesperson added. The startup plans to file for an initial public offering after the public listing of Ola Electric, the leading electric two-wheeler brand in India that spun out of Ola. Ola Electric is looking to raise $662 million from its IPO in India, according to paperwork it filed late last year.

Government Consulting Firm Falls Victim to Massive Social Security Number Breach at Hands of Hackers

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U.S. consulting firm Greylock McKinnon Associates disclosed a data breach in which hackers stole as many as 341,650 Social Security numbers. The data breach was disclosed on Friday on Maine’s government website, where the state posts data breach notifications. A spokesperson for the Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment. We received confirmation of which individuals’ information was affected and obtained their contact addresses on February 7, 2024,” the firm wrote. GMA told victims that “your personal and Medicare information was likely affected in this incident,” which includes names, dates of birth, home address, some medical information and health insurance information, and Medicare claim numbers, which included Social Security Numbers.

Microsoft and Quantinuum: Pioneering the Next Era of Quantum Computing

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The tech world is incredibly focused on AI and its applications today, but artificial intelligence is hardly the only place where progress is being made. If you want to get really into the weeds, pay attention to the progress that quantum computing is making, as made evident recently by an announcement from Microsoft and Quantinuum. The pair of companies made what TechCrunch described as a “major breakthrough in quantum error correction,” which could make quantum computing systems far more usable than before. The gist is that they encoded several physical qubits into a single logical qubit, which made it easier to detect and correct errors. The error rate in quantum computing is a material issue to the technology’s performance, making the news that the two companies managed “run more than 14,000 experiments without a single error” pretty big news.

Is a Data Privacy Law Realistically Feasible to Pass in Congress?

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Hello, and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. This is our Monday show, where we dig into the weekend and take a peek at the week that is to come. Now that we are finally past Y Combinator’s demo day — though our Friday show is worth listening if you haven’t had a chance yet — we can dive into the latest news. So, this morning on Equity Monday we got into the chance that the United States might pass a real data privacy law. There’s movement to report, but we’re still very, very far from anything becoming law.

“Avendus Aims to Raise $300 Million for Upcoming Private Equity Fund as Premier Indian Venture Advisor”

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Avendus, India’s leading investment bank for venture deals, is looking to raise about $300 million for its private equity unit, according to three sources familiar with the matter. With its third private equity fund, Avendus plans to write larger checks more frequently, one of the sources said. The firm raised its second fund, amounting to around $185 million, in 2021. Avendus employs over 150 bankers and was the top financial advisor in India last year. In the past decade, similar to financial advisors in other regions, Avendus has diversified its offerings, venturing into wealth management, credit financing, and private equity.

The Enduring Presence of Remote Work: A CEO’s Unlikely Wish

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Working from home isn’t going away, even if some CEOs wish it would Most workers crave flexibility and work-life balanceWhen I started working from home in the late 1980s as a freelance technical writer, I was clearly an outlier. Today, 14% of U.S. workers work at home full time (including me), and that number is expected to increase to 20% by next year, according to data published by USA Today. Wayfair, the Boston-based online furniture company, concentrated on remote workers over in-office folks in a layoff earlier this year, according to a WSJ report. Meanwhile Michael Bloomberg suggested remote workers weren’t actually working, but playing golf (which honestly sounds like projecting to me). That’s a lot of executive energy being directed against working from home and toward working in the office.