Two of the country’s prominent fabless AI chip startups, Rebellions and Sapeon, have agreed to merge, the companies said on Wednesday.
The merger is a strategic move by Rebellions and Sapeon aimed at leading the fabless AI chip market in South Korea to take on global rivals like Nvidia.
Indeed, the deal comes at a pivotal moment in the global chip industry.
Meanwhile, KT in 2023 incorporated Atom, Rebellions’ datacenter-focused AI chip, into its cloud-based NPU infrastructure.
Last November, the company launched a 7-nanometer AI chip, X330 NPU, for autonomous vehicles, and earlier this year, it said it would develop an on-device AI chip targeting the edge computing market.
Inside LemFi’s play to be fintech to the Global South diaspora First, the Nigerian startup focused on migrants from Africa.
These events spotlight the company’s growing influence in Africa’s remittance market, fuelled by a $33 million Series A funding round and the launch of services in the U.S. corridor, both announced last August.
LemFi later expanded to serve other African diaspora communities in the country before entering the U.K. market in 2021 by acquiring RightCard for $2.5 million.
Additionally, Daiyaan Alam, formerly leading partnerships at Delivery Hero subsidiary Foodpanda in Pakistan, is spearheading LemFi’s expansion efforts into Pakistan and South Asia.
They join Allen Qu, former COO at Chinese-backed African fintech OPay, who leads the fintech’s growth among the Chinese diaspora.
StealthMole, an AI-powered dark web intelligence startup that specializes in monitoring cyber threats and detecting cybercrime, announced Thursday that it has raised a $7 million Series A funding round.
The startup serves over 50 clients across 17 countries in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.
One differentiator from its competitors in the cybersecurity industry is its unique expertise in Asia-related threats, Kevin Yoo, chief operating officer (COO) at StealthMole, told TechCrunch.
“The high demand for Asia-oriented threat information underscores the uniqueness and value of our dataset for customers worldwide, within and beyond Asia,” Yoo said.
Korea Investment Partners led the Series A round with participation from Hibiscus Fund (a joint venture between RHL Ventures, Penjana Kapital and KB Investment) and Smilegate Investment.
Derek Smith, the founder of Plug In South LA, grew up in southern Los Angeles and saw first-hand the frustration that stems from lack of economic development.
And it’s why Smith’s ultimate goal for Plug In South LA is to smooth the way for Black and brown entrepreneurs looking to build tech startups and need help and guidance.
“We really want to support those founders and entrepreneurs who can build businesses that can scale broadly,” Smith told TechCrunch.
Smith sees a bevy of underutilized talent in areas like South LA.
Vaughn Blake, a partner at Blue Bear Ventures, says he met Smith right after he launched Plug In South LA and was asked to participate on a panel during one of the early demo days.
It will be second after the space agency’s existing Satish Dhawan Space Centre, founded in Andhra Pradesh’s Sriharikota in 1971, with two launch pads.
The spaceport will be dedicated to launching smaller launch vehicles and will be ready in about two years, ISRO chairman S Somanath said on the sidelines of the event in Tamil Nadu.
Spread over 2,350 acres, the Kulasekharapatnam spaceport will help save fuel for small rocket launches as the port can launch rockets directly south over the Indian Ocean without requiring crossing landmasses.
“This facility will play an instrumental role in accommodating the increasing launch frequency of both ISRO and the growing private space industry in the coming years.
Bhatt, director general of the Indian Space Association.
Intuitive Machines’ first moon mission will come to a premature end due to the spacecraft landing on its side, which altered how the solar panels are positioned in relation to the sun, the company said in an update Tuesday morning.
Intuitive Machines made history when it landed its spacecraft, called Odysseus, near the lunar south pole last week.
The lander is the first American hardware to touch the lunar surface since NASA’s final crewed Apollo mission in 1972.
It’s also the first privately built and operated spacecraft to land on the moon — ever – and the closest a lander has ever come to the lunar south pole.
Intuitive Machines and NASA leadership will host a second televised news conference tomorrow to discuss updates to the mission.
Hyped AI startup Humane has announced plans for its first international market, inking a deal with South Korean carrier SK Telecom.
The announcement comes shortly after the San Francisco-based company revealed it was pushing back the shipping date of its Ai Pin device from March to mid-April in its domestic U.S. market.
The Ai Pin costs $699 up front, with a recurring $24 monthly subscription that gives the user a phone number and unlimited data to power as many AI-powered queries they like.
And just yesterday, SK Telecom announced a partnership with AI search engine Perplexity to bring its premium “Pro” plan to SK Telecom’s 32 million subscribers.
It’s also not yet clear when the Ai Pin might make it to market in South Korea, but given the delays currently surrounding its U.S. launch we maybe shouldn’t expect it too soon.
In the latest development, three-year-old Hohm Energy, which connects homeowners and businesses with accredited solar installers, product suppliers, and embedded solar finance in South Africa, has raised $8 million in seed investment.
The funding, whose first tranche of $4.25 million came in Q4 2022, is the largest seed round for a tech startup in South Africa, according to Hohm Energy.
Hohm Energy says its solution was built as an alternative and sustainable energy source for over 7 million addressable households connected to South Africa’s national grid.
Hohm Energy would then generate a final engineering proposal and present it to its banking partners for financing approval.
“We are thrilled to announce our inaugural investment in Hohm Energy.
Uber has signed a memorandum of understanding with an Indian government-backed program that aims to make mobility and commerce more accessible across the South Asian nation.
The ride-hailing giant said Thursday that it will explore an integration with Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) to explore integrations with the network and expand range of its mobility offerings on the Uber app.
The ONDC is an ambitious initiative seeking to disrupt the country’s fast-growing e-commerce and mobility sectors.
Though firms like Amazon and Flipkart have expressed intentions to participate in the open network, their engagement remains limited.
“As the Open Network is continuously evolving, MTT (mobility, transport and travel) is certainly a critical sector for us.
Honor of Kings, Tencent’s massively popular mobile game, has its eye set on the international market in 2024.
In part thanks to its success with loot boxes, Honor of Kings has been an enormous financial success for Tencent.
It was the world’s second-highest-grossing mobile game in December, trailing only after Monopoly Go!, according to market research firm Sensor Tower.
As of February 6, Honor of Kings had amassed over 2 million pre-registrations across MENA, Eastern Europe and South Asia.
With its flourishing gaming population, the MENA region will be an important test for Honor of Kings’ second try at global expansion.
