Byju’s had launched its first rights issue in late January, but a court order directed the company to not tap the funds it had raised through that rights issue after many of its investors opposed the fundraise.
Thursday’s court order is the latest episode in the spectacular collapse of Byju’s, once the world’s most valuable edtech startup.
TechCrunch couldn’t determine exactly how much Byju’s ended up raising in the first rights issue.
In the letter, he urged his estranged investors to give him another chance and participate in the rights issue.
“But my benchmark of success is the participation of all shareholders in the rights issue.
Human Native AI is a London-based startup building a marketplace to broker such deals between the many companies building LLM projects and those willing to license data to them.
Human Native AI also helps rights holders prepare and price their content and monitors for any copyright infringements.
Human Native AI takes a cut of each deal and charges AI companies for its transaction and monitoring services.
Human Native AI announced a £2.8 million seed round led by LocalGlobe and Mercuri, two British micro VCs, this week.
It is also a smart time for Human Native AI to launch.
Not all generative AI models are created equal, particularly when it comes to how they treat polarizing subject matter.
They found that the models tended to answer questions inconsistently, which reflects biases embedded in the data used to train the models, they say.
“Our research shows significant variation in the values conveyed by model responses, depending on culture and language.”Text-analyzing models, like all generative AI models, are statistical probability machines.
Instrumental to an AI model’s training data are annotations, or labels that enable the model to associate specific concepts with specific data (e.g.
Other studies have examined the deeply ingrained political, racial, ethnic, gender and ableist biases in generative AI models — many of which cut across languages, countries and dialects.
TechCrunch has kept readers informed regarding Fearless Fund’s courtroom battle to provide business grants to Black women.
Today, we are happy to announce that Fearless Fund CEO and co-founder Arian Simone will speak at the Disrupt 2024 Builders Stage in a fireside chat discussing her organization’s fight for racial equity.
This June, an appeals court ruled that Fearless Fund’s business grant likely violates Section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866 and has banned the grant’s deployment indefinitely.
Fearless Fund is one of many organizations facing the heat for having programs focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Register for your Disrupt pass today and join 10,000 tech leaders for 3 days of startup innovation this October.
Additionally, in a notable step last month, the European Union opened a formal investigation into whether Meta’s tactic breaches obligations that apply to Facebook and Instagram under the competition-focused Digital Markets Act (DMA).
The Board’s opinion on “consent or pay” is expected to provide guidance on how the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) should be applied in this area.
It’s worth noting the Board’s opinion will look at “consent or pay” generally, rather than specifically investigating Meta’s deployment.
Nor is Meta the only service provider pushing “consent or pay” on users.
“However, the current ‘Consent or Pay’ model sets in stone a coercive dynamic, leaving users without an actual choice.
We’ll publish several pieces throughout the year as the AI boom continues, highlighting key work that often goes unrecognized.
Kate Devlin is a lecturer in AI and society at King’s College London.
I guess it’s a two-pronged thing: we need more women in visible, top positions, and we need to tackle sexism in schools and beyond.
What are some issues AI users should be aware of?
Hold the companies responsible for considering things like human rights, labor, sustainability and social impact in their AI supply chain.
Byju’s is holding an extraordinary general meeting Friday, where it will attempt to pass the resolution over the rights issue.
The rights issue values Byju’s under $250 million, a stunning drop from the $22 billion valuation it carried in early 2022.
Prosus Ventures, Peak XV Partners and Chan Zuckerberg Initiative are among the investors who didn’t participate in Byju’s recent $200 million rights issue.
The investors have instead sought, using legal means, to remove Raveendran and his family from the startup and to invalidate the rights issue.
The investors quit the startup’s board whereas the global auditing giant Deloitte dropped the account of Byju’s over these concerns last year.
Byju’s secured favorable outcomes in two court hearings Thursday, paving the way for the embattled edtech startup to move ahead with the extraordinary general meeting scheduled for Friday.
The National Company Law Tribunal refused to stay on Thursday Byju’s planned EGM to increase the authorized share capital for the $200 million rights issue.
The matter will be heard again on April 4, but as the lawyer representing the estranged four investors of Byju’s warned, once the authorized share capital has been increased, it cannot be reversed.
Separately, the Karnataka High Court said Thursday it will only hear the case where the investor group seeks to remove Byju’s founder and chief executive Byju Raveendran from the firm after two months.
The rights issue is crucial for Byju’s, once India’s most valuable startup, as it seeks to tap the $200 million it has already received from a set of investors, including Raveendran.
Cricket match streaming has been the prime driver of new users for streaming platforms in India.
By securing numerous cricket rights, Disney and Reliance have left rival services with limited content options to attract fans.
“The 2023-27 IPL broadcasting now sit under the JV – Viacom 18 has digital streaming rights (won for US$2.9bn) while Star has TV broadcasting rights for US$2.8bn.
Combined with about 8% of the TV market that Viacom18 assumes in India, the merged operations — which will feature some 120 TV channels — will command about 49% of the broadcasting market.
In a statement Wednesday, Disney and Reliance said they will reach 750 million users in India with the merged entity.
In a 758-word letter, content of which was reviewed by TechCrunch, Raveendran claimed that the shareholders violated several “essential” local rules.
Raveendran claimed in the letter that the extraordinary general meeting lacked the minimum quorum and failed to win majority support for proposed resolutions.
Raveendran claimed the EGM was convened without adhering to the procedures set out by law and only 35 of Byju’s 170 total shareholders attended, representing around 45% ownership in the company.
The rights issue resets the startup’s valuation, once at $22 billion, to about $25 million.
“Our rights issue has seen an overwhelming response.
