Kenyan B2B e-commerce company MarketForce is winding down its B2B e-commerce business that served informal merchants (mom-and-pop stores) after a turbulent two-year period that saw it scale down operations severely.
The shutdown of the B2B e-commerce arm dubbed RejaReja comes months after MarketForce withdrew the service from all its markets, including Nigeria and Kenya, save for Uganda.
At its peak, it employed more than 800 people and served 270,000 informal merchants.
MarketForce had raised $42.5 million, including $40 million debt-equity in a Series A round in 2022 at over $100 million valuation, to fuel the business.
Several B2B e-commerce companies in Africa have also scaled back operations as the funding crunch persists.
Google Cloud on Tuesday joined AWS and Azure in announcing its first custom-built Arm processor, dubbed Axion.
Based on Arm’s Neoverse 2 designs, Google says its Axion instances offer 30% better performance than other Arm-based instances from competitors like AWS and Microsoft and up to 50% better performance and 60% better energy efficiency than comparable X86-based instances.
To be fair, though, Microsoft only announced its Cobalt Arm chips late last year, too, and those chips aren’t yet available to customers, either.
In a press briefing ahead of Tuesday’s announcement, Google stressed that since Axion is built on an open foundation, Google Cloud customers will be able to bring their existing Arm workloads to Google Cloud without any modifications.
“Through this collaboration, we’re accessing a broad ecosystem of cloud customers who have already deployed ARM-based workloads across hundreds of ISVs and open-source projects.”More later this year.
Los Angeles-based Gitai said Tuesday that its autonomous robotic arm has nailed a tech demonstration outside the International Space Station.
Autonomous robotic systems still have a ways to go before they render human labor obsolete, especially here on Earth; but in space, human labor is expensive (and dangerous), which provides an opening for a robotic alternative.
The 1.5-meter autonomous robotic arm, which the startup calls S2, launched to the ISS aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 in January.
In the nearer term, the company is targeting on-orbit satellite servicing for spacecraft in low Earth orbit and geostationary orbit.
The arm’s technology readiness level (TLR), a standard used by NASA to chart the maturity of technology, is now at 7, the highest level, Gitai said.
The past couple of years have gone from a few select companies to seemingly everyone in and around warehouse robotics looking to tackle the problem.
And then there’s TruckBot.
Instead, TruckBot sat atop a conveyer belt.
In fact, TruckBot is actually part conveyer belt.
“TruckBot is a game-changer for warehouses looking to streamline their operations and reduce costs,” the company notes.” The dock door is the largest bottleneck in our supply chain and unloading trailers is back-breaking work.
Nvidia’s chief rivals in the AI chip space — AMD, Arm and Intel — have been investing aggressively in startups, too, looking to make up ground in markets inclusive of the especially frothy generative AI segment.
IntelOf Nvidia’s competitors, Intel far and away has the biggest startup investment operation thanks to Intel Capital, its long-running VC.
Curiously, AI startups — despite their strategic importance to the chip industry these days — make up a relatively small portion of Intel’s venture portfolio.
According to Crunchbase, Intel’s holdings in software, IT and enterprise SaaS companies far outnumber its AI startup holdings by deal volume.
AMDLike Intel and Arm, AMD invests in startups both directly and through a VC org, AMD Ventures.
Riot Games is laying off about 530 employees, which represents 11% of its workforce, the Tencent-owned company announced on Monday.
The League of Legends maker is also sunsetting its five-year-old publishing group, Riot Forge.
Riot Games wrote two posts about the changes, addressing the affected employees in one and its players in another.
He also highlighted two areas that’ll see “immediate impact” from the organizational changes– Riot Forge and the digital collectible card game Legends of Runeterra.
Riot Games joins other video game publishers making job cuts, such as Epic Games, which eliminated 830 employees in September.
Generally, I’m an extremely active person who primarily enjoys weight training, and it’s a key component of my mental well-being as well as my physical health.
What I didn’t expect was finding relief by way of virtual boxing.
I had been using Supernatural on my Meta Quest 3 headset since picking one up at launch, and found it surprisingly compelling even before my injury — despite my long-held opinion that no one wants to work out in a sweaty headset.
Supernatural is also helping with my rehabilitation as I build back range of motion and flexibility in my now mostly healed wrist.
The injury just made me realize at a very accelerated pace what the company saw in Supernatural in terms of lasting, sticky appeal for home VR use.
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