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Food-delivery giant Zomato is venturing into the direct-to-consumer (D2C) space with its quick commerce platform Blinkit. Details on this and more in today’s ETtech Morning Dispatch. Also in the letter:■ Snap India MD Pulkit Trivedi interview■ Aroa Venture launches Rs 400 crore fund■ NPCI MD on fintech’s next, big thingZomato plans for Blinkit to deliver more via ecommerce Gurugram-based Zomato is exploring a significant play in the direct-to-consumer (D2C) space through its quick-commerce firm Blinkit and could find…

A young man holds a credit card and uses a laptop for online shopping.Diy13 | Istock | Getty ImagesAmericans shopping online after midnight often make riskier transactions and are more likely to default on their loans, according to Affirm Chief Financial Officer Michael Linford.The fintech firm uses the hour a consumer attempts a transaction as a key data point to help determine whether to approve loans, Linford told CNBC in a recent interview. Other factors include a user's repayment history with Affirm and transaction…

Apple overtook Samsung as the world’s leading smartphone vendor in Q4 taking home 24% of total shipments according to research firm Canalys. Cupertino also ended the year as the top vendor marking the first time it outpaced Samsung on the yearly basis. Smartphone shipments for Q4 2023 reached 320 million units, representing an 8 percentage point increase from Q4 2022. Q4 2023 was also the first quarter with positive growth after seven consecutive quarters of decline. Canalys estimates 1.1 billion smartphone…

Large language models (LLMs) like chatGPT has been a hot topic for business world since last year. Thus, the number of these models have drastically increased. Yet, one major LLM challenge prevents more enterprises adopting it, system costs for developing these models. For instance, Megatron-Turing from NVIDIA and Microsoft is estimated to hold a cost of approximately $100 million for the entire project. Serverless GPU space can reduce this cost by helping with inference phase of large language models (LLMs). Serverless…

The number of large language models (LLMs) has been increasing since 2019 due to the models’ extensive application areas and capabilities (See Figure 1). Yet, the estimates show that designing a new foundation model can cost up to $90 million while fine-tuning or enhancing existing large language models can cost $1 million to $100 thousand.1 These costs result from: Computational costs like hardware usage for training runs Data gathering and labelling costs Engineering and R&D costs Figure 1: The increasing number…

According to AI stats, 90% of commercial apps are expected to leverage AI by the end of 2025. Despite the increasing role of AI, business leaders are concerned due to: The bias in data and algorithms leading to erroneous outcomes in 85% of AI projects Authorities like the EU planning to add AI regulations. Similar regulations like the GDPR can cost 4% of a firm’s worldwide annual revenue in case of infringements. 1  Figure 1: AI governance popularity in terms of Google search volume 2  One recent answer to this problem…

Last week we forecast that the sixteenth car in history would sell at auction for more than US$20.0 million. It didn't happen, but what did occur was even more astonishing. The 1964 Ferrari 250 LM had been to auction in Paris in February where a bid of €20.0 million was rejected and the car passed in. Last week, the car was sold for €15,771,200 (US$16,867,298) including buyers premium.Had that €20 million been accepted in February, the total price of the car would have been €25.0 million with the 25% buyers premium added,…

nCino Inc, which offers cloud-based software to banks, is exploring its options, including a potential sale, after attracting takeover interest from private equity firms, people familiar with the matter said on Friday. The board of directors of nCino, which has a market value of about $2.9 billion, has been in talks about forming a special committee to review the expressions of interest in a deal and decide on its next steps, the sources said. Insight Partners, a private equity firm that owns about 35% of nCino, has not…

Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. responded to the European Commission's…

TriNet Group, an online payroll services provider with a market value of $5.8 billion, is exploring a potential sale of the company, according to people familiar with the matter.The Dublin, California-based company is working with investment bank Morgan Stanley to engage with potential acquirers, the sources said. No deal is certain, the sources added, requesting anonymity because the matter is confidential. TriNet and Morgan Stanley declined to comment.Founded in 1988, TriNet provides a wide range of human resources…