Technology
Disrupt 2024 full Breakout Session agenda
With TechCrunch Disrupt 2024 just days away, we’re gearing up for an incredible three-day event packed with interactive sessions! From October 28-30 at Moscone West in San Francisco, dive into Q&A conversations with a panel of industry experts around the most pressing issues and cutting-edge tech trends to help empower your growth.
Don’t miss your chance to save and engage in these first come, first served Breakouts! Register now to lock in up to $400 in savings on select tickets before door prices increase. Want to bring a friend? Take advantage of the Expo+ 2-for-1 Pass and bring a plus-one at half the cost of a single Expo+ Pass. These offers are valid through October 27.
Discover the complete roster of Breakout Sessions below, spread across two stages at Disrupt.
Breakout Session Agenda
The Future of High-Growth Tech: Beyond the Apple App Store
Led by Sofia Dolfe, Index Ventures; James Ding, DraftWise; Jordan Taylor, Vizcom
As the tech landscape evolves, the next wave of high-growth, high-impact companies may not emerge from the Apple App Store, but rather from the Microsoft app store. This shift signals a broader transformation in historically slow-moving industries like legal tech, where innovative solutions are challenging the status quo. Buyers in these sectors are increasingly open to embracing change, paving the way for a new era of technological advancement. Join our panel of experts as we explore how AI and other emerging technologies are driving this evolution, and what it means for the future of knowledge work in industries traditionally resistant to rapid change.
How AI Is Supercharging Tools for Knowledge Workers
Led by Harpinder Singh, Innovation Endeavors; Tanguy Chau, Paxton AI; Luke McGartland, Sequence; Dion Almaer, Augment Code
Advancements in AI are enabling new tooling that will 10x the productivity of knowledge workers by reducing monotonous, repetitive tasks. These advances have also unlocked opportunities for more creativity and experimentation. This panel explores the latest in professional services tooling and explores how companies can maximize performance and productivity. We will also explore the future of tooling for knowledge workers and how emerging breakthroughs might be applied. Let’s explore the future of work.
Generative AI: Beyond the Hype — Building Real-World Applications
Led by Priyanka Vergadia, Microsoft
Join this interactive session to explore the practical applications of generative AI. We’ll break down the different types of generative models, discuss their strengths and limitations, and showcase inspiring use cases across various industries.
Beyond Snowflake and Databricks: Insights from the Frontlines of Data Transformation Disruption
Led by Colin Zima, Omni; Toby Mao, Tobiko Data; Jordan Tigani, MotherDuck; Daniel Svonava, Superlinked; Tomasz Tunguz, Theory Ventures
By 2025, our global data volume will reach 175 zetabytes, a figure that is 50% more than 2023. But while the wealth of data grows, it remains unwieldy to use. Poor data quality costs organizations an average of $12.9 million annually. As organizations grapple with the exponential growth of data, they need better data transformation solutions to process it. The worldwide spending on such digital transformation solutions is forecasted to reach $3.9 trillion by 2027. In other words, the market is ripe for challenging the status quo, even despite the continued growth of data darlings Snowflake and Databricks. Tomasz can speak to the future of data in the context of SF and DB’s direct competition, and how startups are tackling these challenges head-on amidst the acceleration of two industry giants.
Navigating the Funding Landscape for Women
Led by Natalie Pan, Mariane Bekker, and Jeni Chang, Women Founders Bay; Aury Cifuentes, How Women Invest
Join us for an exciting panel discussion featuring three leading female venture capitalists from Progressive Ventures and How Women Invest. This session will provide you with essential insights into the funding world, focusing on the latest trends, what investors look for, and effective strategies for women founders to stand out.
Powering Ahead: The Future of Energy & Infrastructure
Led by Rachel Payne and Troy Helming, EarthGrid; Nicholas Larson, Silicon Zombies
Join us for “Powering Ahead: The Future of Energy & Infrastructure” featuring Troy Helming, a visionary leader in renewable energy and successful entrepreneur. In our breakout session, we’ll dive into the latest innovations shaping the energy sector, including advancements in renewable technologies, grid modernization, and sustainable infrastructure development. We’ll also share best practices for building a startup, offering practical advice drawn from Troy’s experiences. Attendees will gain insights into how these trends are transforming the way we produce, distribute, and consume energy, and how to capitalize on emerging opportunities. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn from an industry expert about the challenges and prospects that lie ahead in the quest for a cleaner, more efficient energy future.
IPO or Bust? Tactical Approaches for Late-Stage Success
Led by Jai Das, Sapphire Ventures; Karthik Subramanian, Goldman Sachs
With rising interest rates and stricter regulatory scrutiny on acquisitions, many growth and late-stage companies that once secured billions in funding are struggling to achieve a successful outcome. In this session, two experienced investors will debate the state of late-stage venture, what they’re seeing in terms of deal activity, if this market is actually coming back as significantly as some are reporting, and where they see the landscape headed in 2025. As part of this, they will dig into what’s going on with IPO markets, whether/when they will open back up, and how this is impacting exit strategies for founders.
The Future of Go-to-Market in the AI Era
Led by Jane Alexander, CapitalG; Chris Klayko, Databricks; Kareem Amin, Clay; Austin Hughes, Unify
From auto-generated outbound messages to AI-written blog posts, AI is fundamentally changing the way that companies go to market. Come discuss the tension between AI-powered automation and human creativity with the founders building these products and the leading practitioners who use them.
Secrets to Actually Being Good at Startup PR in 2024
Led by Turner Novak, Banana Capital; Kira McCroden, Forerunner; Emilie Gerber, Six Eastern; Jack Randall, Aetherflux
The communications and PR landscape has dramatically shifted in recent years: new mediums (Substack, podcasts) have spiked in influence and popularity, fueling new strategies (“going direct”) for shaping and amplifying public perceptions — all while an increasingly critical media landscape continues to hold all types of industry stakeholders accountable. How can early and growing companies responsibly navigate these changes and be successful in building an inspiring brand? This roundtable will dissect the growing breadth and importance of different comms functions: the under-appreciated, consequential nature of internal comms, the increasingly indispensable need for owned channels, the pros and cons of political takes amidst an election year, and how to actually get meaningful press coverage for a company. The tech communications industry has arguably never been more dynamic.
Beyond the Wrapper: Building and Raising Organically with AI
Led by Alessandra Andrenacci, Dropbox
Many startups today fundraise on the promise of being an “AI-first company.” But how do investors distinguish between companies that organically have AI at their core and those that are “GPT wrappers”? How can founders demonstrate that AI is intrinsic to their business and not an add-on intended to ride the wave of AI interest? This session addresses these and related questions by focusing on meaningfully incorporating AI into your startup and getting funded by investors. We use cutting-edge fundraising stats from DocSend to frame the conversation and ask founders and VCs how AI is changing fundraising expectations and how startups can organically incorporate AI into their businesses while staying ahead of increasingly sophisticated investor interest.
Smaller, Faster, Smarter: How Tiny AI Is Democratizing AI Technology Starting with the Smart Home Camera
Led by Roeland Nusselder and Tony Fadell, Plumerai
Nest founder, former SVP of Apple’s iPhone and iPod teams, and principal at Build Collective, Tony Fadell joins Plumerai’s co-founder and CEO Roeland Nusselder to discuss how Tiny AI is democratizing AI. By making AI smaller, efficient, and cost-effective, Tiny AI is paving the way for widespread adoption across industries, fostering innovation, and putting the power of AI into the hands of many. Tiny AI is shaping a future where intelligence is embedded all around us, enhancing our daily lives in ways we’ve only dreamed of. The future is here, and it’s smaller than you think!
Webby Talks: “It’s Giving Brainrot”
Led by Nick Borenstein, Webby Awards; Margaret Johnson, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners; Monica Khan, Bay Area Creator Economy; David Mogensen, Uber
In the Webby Awards’ annual thought leadership series focused on the trends and consumer insights shaping the internet, this year the leading award for internet excellence will explore how brands, marketers, digital creatives, and technologists are embracing chronically online culture to forge more creative and sustainable connections with audiences. The presentation, titled “It’s giving brainrot: How chronically online culture is taking us from the niche to the nonsensical—and why that can be a good thing,” will be led by the Webby Awards general manager Nick Borenstein and will feature insights and social listening data from Meltwater, along with trends from over 13,000 submissions to the 28th Annual Webby Awards. Following the presentation, Margaret Johnson (chief creative officer, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners), David Mogensen (VP of Global Marketing, Uber), and Monica Khan (co-founder, Bay Area Creator Economy) will join for a fireside chat to share their insights into this cultural moment.
Is Your AI Deployment an Advantage or an Embarrassment? Here’s How to Know
Led by Dane Sherrets and Marten Mickos, HackerOne
Rushed AI deployments can translate to embarrassing incidents, reputational damage, and financial loss. Brands like Adobe, Snap, and Anthropic have joined a growing list of companies embracing AI red teaming to deploy AI responsibly and find emerging threats before bad actors. HackerOne will share tales from the front lines of AI safety and security, so you know how to avoid AI embarrassments — from the circumvention of AI guardrails to harmful content generation. You’ll learn how top companies use AI red teaming and actionable ways to reduce AI risk that extend your AI advantage.
Scaling Technical Startups: Navigating Growth, Positioning, and Competitive Pressure
Led by Kevin Hu, Metaplane; Tobi Coker, Felicis
It’s a challenging time to scale a technical or data-focused startup — competition for customers, fundraising, and top talent continues to increase. This session will break down unique, timely challenges for technical founders and teams, and provide actionable advice to thrive in this highly competitive market. Attendees will take away best practices in product development, open source vs. closed source strategies, and how to position and message effectively —especially in pre-revenue stages for investor appeal. Technical founders will learn how to navigate the complexities of fundraising, with a focus on raising Series A for data-driven businesses, and why scaling technical or infrastructure companies requires a different playbook compared to traditional SaaS startups.
Deep Tech in Winter: How to Win Investors in 2024
Led by Po Bronson, Pae Wu, and Duncan Turner, SOSV
Venture’s deep chill has been extra frigid for deep tech startups due to their reputation for long timelines and big capital needs. But investors are still game for deep tech startups that are smart about balancing product scope and time to market. Vertical integration and industrial scale-ups are out; selling innovation into existing supply chains, now that’s smart. SOSV general partners Duncan Turner, Dr. Pae Wu, and Po Bronson help oversee the launch of about 75 deep tech startups a year and work with hundreds of deep tech co-investors. They will discuss what’s getting investors to “yes” to deep tech investments now, and take questions from the audience.
Bringing the Outside In: Connecting Startups with Large Banks to Power the Future of Finance
Led by Arvind Purushotham, Citi Ventures; Ari Tuchman, Quantifind; Kartik Mani, Citi
Arvind, along with Citi partners and portfolio company Quantifind, will discuss Citi Ventures’ approach to working with startups and how governance and risk management are essential to responsible innovation. He will also discuss how attendees can peer through their own crystal ball to predict the next big thing in tech and finance, from AI to the fintech revolution and beyond.
The Age of Technical Engineering Founders: How They Are Driving AI Innovation
Led by Christine Yen, Honeycomb; Anand Babu, MinIO; Prukalpa Sankar, Atlan; Karthik Ranganathan, Yugabyte
In the evolving AI landscape, innovation is being powered by solutions to deeply technical problems that require leaders to take on a much more hands-on, technical approach. We have moved away from the business founder/CEOs of the past and into a new age where engineering founders are increasingly more common. This panel, composed of leaders from Honeycomb, MinIO, Atlan, and Yugabyte will discuss why engineering skills are critical for the modern leader’s role. They will share specific examples of important skill sets, and how founders can position themselves for long-term success as technology leaders in the future.
Founder Mode: AI Startups in Learning, Health, and Autonomous Agents
Led by Amy Kelly, Miri AI; Shronit Ladhani, LearnTube; Div Garg, MultiOn; Jeremiah Owyang, Blitzscaling Ventures
Learn how today’s top founders are using AI to solve real-world problems. The panel experts will include MultiOn, which creates AI agents on the web to solve a variety of problems such as booking flights, shopping, and internet research; Miri.ai, which offers health and wellness AI coaches; and LearnTube, which uses generative AI to create instant learning courses, curriculum, quizzes, and certifications. Panel discussion and Q&A on how to launch, build, grow, and fund an AI startup.
How to Stand Out Amongst the AI Wave: Strategies for Success in Enterprise Sales
Led by Rudina Seseri, Glasswing Ventures; Marc Boroditsky, Cloudflare
Companies worldwide are actively investing in AI deployments across a wide range of use cases, and thousands of startups have emerged to fill these needs. This breakout session features Rudina Seseri, founder and managing partner of Glasswing Ventures, and Marc Boroditsky, president of Revenue at Cloudflare. They explore how AI has created a new paradigm shift in selling to enterprises, what the largest companies are using as criteria when considering their purchases, and how to avoid false indications of interest. Attendees will learn how to optimize scarce time and resources to build a truly valuable and viable product.
Building AI Agents — for Product Leaders & Founders
Led by Marily Nika, Meta
This is a live, hands-on workshop tailored for product leaders, aimed at providing a practical introduction to agentic products. You’ll gain a clear understanding of what AI agents are, how they function, and where they fit into product strategies. The workshop will guide you step by step through the process of building two AI agents from scratch, giving you a strong grasp of how to apply these tools to solve business problems, automate processes, and enhance user experiences. Bring your laptops to this interactive workshop!
Safety, Trust, and Profit: Anticipating Misuse to Build Safer Products and Attract Investment
Led by Megs Shah, The Parasol Cooperative; Chad Sniffen, National Network to End Domestic Violence; Sahab Aslam, Sukan Ventures
In today’s startup world, one data breach or safety failure can destroy your reputation and growth. For founders, the challenge is how to scale while ensuring user safety, privacy, and security, all within budget. VCs are focusing on startups with strong ESG practices, prioritizing those that address safety early. Failing to comply with data laws, such as COPPA, can result in penalties up to $170 million.
This session covers how to build safeguards to prevent tech misuse, like Apple AirTag’s misuse for stalking. With one in three women globally experiencing violence and 32 million child exploitation reports submitted to NCMEC in one year, tech’s role in abuse is a rising threat. We will also explore how open source security tools can cut costs by 55% and how addressing safety and security early prevents legal risks and attracts ethical investors, and most importantly protects the vulnerable.
Stablecoins: The Future of Fintech
Led by Nik Milanović, This Week in Fintech; Cuy Sheffield; Ben Milne
Why are stablecoins beginning to take off as a payments product? What are the most interesting examples and use cases? What technology will they replace — and where do they go from here?
Don’t miss these insightful Breakout Sessions
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Technology
NYT Mini Crossword today: puzzle answers for Thursday, October 24
The New York Times has introduced the next title coming to its Games catalog following Wordle’s continued success — and it’s all about math. Digits has players adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing numbers. You can play its beta for free online right now.
In Digits, players are presented with a target number that they need to match. Players are given six numbers and have the ability to add, subtract, multiply, or divide them to get as close to the target as they can. Not every number needs to be used, though, so this game should put your math skills to the test as you combine numbers and try to make the right equations to get as close to the target number as possible.
Players will get a five-star rating if they match the target number exactly, a three-star rating if they get within 10 of the target, and a one-star rating if they can get within 25 of the target number. Currently, players are also able to access five different puzzles with increasingly larger numbers as well. I solved today’s puzzle and found it to be an enjoyable number-based game that should appeal to inquisitive minds that like puzzle games such as Threes or other The New York Times titles like Wordle and Spelling Bee.
In an article unveiling Digits and detailing The New York Time Games team’s process to game development, The Times says the team will use this free beta to fix bugs and assess if it’s worth moving into a more active development phase “where the game is coded and the designs are finalized.” So play Digits while you can, as The New York Times may move on from the project if it doesn’t get the response it is hoping for.
Digits’ beta is available to play for free now on The New York Times Games’ website
Science & Environment
Polar bears face higher risk of disease in a warming Arctic
As the Arctic warms, polar bears face a growing risk of contracting viruses, bacteria and parasites that they were less likely to encounter just 30 years ago, research has revealed.
In a study that has provided clues about how polar bear disease could be linked to ice loss, scientists examined blood samples from bears in the Chukchi Sea – between Alaska and Russia.
They analysed samples that had been gathered between 1987 and 1994, then collected and studied samples three decades later – between 2008 and 2017.
The researchers found that significantly more of the recent blood samples contained chemical signals that bears had been infected with one of five viruses, bacteria or parasites.
It is difficult to know, from blood samples, how the bears’ physical health was affected, but wildlife biologist Dr Karyn Rode from the US Geological Survey said it showed that something was changing throughout the whole Arctic ecosystem.
The researchers tested for six different pathogens in total – viruses, bacteria or parasites that are primarily associated with land-based animals but have been recorded before in marine animals, including species that polar bears hunt.
The study covered three decades, Dr Rode said, “when there had been a substantial loss of sea ice and there’s been increased land use in [this population of polar bears]”.
“So we wanted to know if exposure had changed – particularly for some of these pathogens that we think are primarily land-oriented.”
The five pathogens, as disease-causing agents are collectively called, that have become more common in polar bears, are two parasites that cause toxoplasmosis and neosporosis, two types of bacteria that cause rabbit fever and brucellosis, and the virus that causes canine distemper.
“Bears in general are pretty robust to disease,” explained Dr Rode. “It’s not typically been known to affect bear population, but I think what it just highlights is that things [in the Arctic] are changing.”
Key polar bear facts
- There are about 26,000 polar bears left in the world, with the majority in Canada. Populations are also found in the US, Russia, Greenland and Norway
- Polar bears are listed as vulnerable to extinction by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, with climate change a key factor in their decline
- Adult males can grow to be around 3m long and can weigh close to 600kg
- Polar bears can eat up to 45kg of blubber in one sitting
- These bears have a powerful sense of smell and can sniff out prey from up to 16km away
- They are strong swimmers and have been spotted up to 100km offshore. They can swim at speeds of around 10km per hour, due in part to their paws being slightly webbed
In the US, polar bears are classified as a threatened species; scientists say the biggest threat to their future is the continuing loss of sea ice habitat, which they depend on as a platform from which to pounce on their marine prey.
Previous research using collar cameras on bears has shown that, as they spend more of the year on land – when there is no available sea ice to hunt from – the bears are unable to find enough calories.
Dr Rode explained that polar bears are top predators: “Our study suggested that they’re getting their exposure to some pathogens primarily through their prey species.
“So what we saw as changes in pathogen exposure for polar bears is indicative of changes that other species are also experiencing.”
The findings are published in the scientific journal PLOS One.
Technology
Mistral AI & Qualcomm partner will boost AI on Snapdragon devices
Qualcomm is one of the companies that has been driving the development of artificial intelligence in the tech industry. The company offers powerful AI processing capabilities for both laptops and mobile devices with its Snapdragon chips. There is also the Qualcomm AI Hub, which makes it easier for developers to access multiple AI models from a single site. Now, Qualcomm has announced Mistral AI as a new partner in the integration of more AI models on Snapdragon hardware.
The market for AI models is witnessing an increasing number of alternatives. New companies have emerged to compete with their own models adapted to different needs. For example, Meta recently presented an AI model capable of autonomously evaluating and training other AI models. There is also Personal AI that enables offline assistant experiences with a business focus on Snapdragon-powered laptops.
Mistral AI is the latest Qualcomm partner to bring AI experiences to Snapdragon-powered devices
The Mistral AI models bear similarities to Personal AI, but they cater to a wider audience and possess sufficient versatility to seamlessly integrate with devices such as PCs, smartphones, and vehicles.
Qualcomm has announced the optimization of the Mistral AI models for its multiple hardware platforms. These include the Snapdragon 8 Elite, Snapdragon Cockpit Elite, Snapdragon Ride Elite, and Snapdragon X Elite. For reference, the Mistral AI models share a similar goal to that of the Gemini Nano. That is, the Mistral AI models are designed to be low-power models, making them ideal for enabling on-device AI experiences on mobile devices. However, Mistral AI asserts that its models are also compatible with cars.
“Mistral AI’s Ministral 3B and Ministral 8B will enable device manufacturers, software vendors, and digital service providers to deliver innovative experiences, such as AI assistants and other applications that understand users’ wants and needs, thanks to the immediacy, reliability, and enhanced privacy of on-device AI,” said Durga Malladi, senior vice president and general manager of technology at Mistral AI.
Mistral 7B v0.3 now available on Qualcomm AI Hub
Currently, the Mistral 7B v0.3 model is available on the Qualcomm AI Hub platform. Therefore, developers can now access this model to create experiences specifically tailored for the Snapdragon hardware. On the other hand, the Ministral 3B and Ministral 8B models will be available soon.
Technology
Minecraft is ending all virtual reality support next spring
For Minecraft players, virtual and mixed reality will soon go the way of a hissing creeper. Developer Mojang announced last month that March 2025 would be the last update for the game . Yesterday’s for the Bedrock edition of the game use similar language, stating that “Our ability to support VR/MR devices has come to an end, and will no longer be supported in updates after March of 2025.”
All is not lost for the block builders who have been enjoying Minecraft in virtual reality. After the final March 2025 update, the patch notes clarify that “you can keep building in your worlds, and your Marketplace purchases (including Minecoins) will continue to be available on a non-VR/MR graphics device such as a computer monitor.” It’s a sad development for a game that was such a good match for the VR experience. And with the Minecraft continues to put up year after year, it’s also a bit discouraging for the broader virtual reality and mixed reality ecosystem to lose such an iconic title.
There is a silver lining for the Minecraft community, however. After a very long wait, the game finally has a native edition available . Sony’s latest console generation has been relegated to using the PS4 version until now, but going forward the game will have 4K resolution and 60 fps even at a longer draw distance. If you’re a PS5 owner who already has the PS4 version of Minecraft, you can claim the new update for free in the PlayStation Store. And with the Bundles of Bravery update rolling out yesterday, it’s a promising time to start a new blocky adventure.
Technology
Nvidia CEO touts India’s progress with sovereign AI and over 100K AI developers trained
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Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang noted India’s progress in its AI journey in a conversation at the Nvidia AI Summit in India. India now has more than 2,000 Nvidia Inception AI companies and more than 100,000 developers trained in AI.
That compares to a global developer count of 650,000 people trained in Nvidia AI technologies, and India’s strategic move into AI is a good example of what Huang calls “sovereign AI,” where countries choose to create their own AI infrastructure to maintain control of their own data.
Nvidia said that India is becoming a key producer of AI for virtually every industry — powered by thousands of startups that are serving the country’s multilingual, multicultural population and scaling
out to global users.
The country is one of the top six global economies leading generative AI adoption and has seen rapid growth in its startup and investor ecosystem, rocketing to more than 100,000 startups this year from under 500 in 2016.
More than 2,000 of India’s AI startups are part of Nvidia Inception, a free program for startups designed to accelerate innovation and growth through technical training and tools, go-to-market support and opportunities to connect with venture capitalists through the Inception VC Alliance.
At the NVIDIA AI Summit, taking place in Mumbai through Oct. 25, around 50 India-based startups are sharing AI innovations delivering impact in fields such as customer service, sports media, healthcare and robotics.
Conversational AI for Indian Railway customers
Bengaluru-based startup CoRover.ai already has over a billion users of its LLM-based conversational AI platform, which includes text, audio and video-based agents.
“The support of NVIDIA Inception is helping us advance our work to automate conversational AI use cases with domain-specific large language models,” said Ankush Sabharwal, CEO of CoRover, in a statement. “NVIDIA AI technology enables us to deliver enterprise-grade virtual assistants that support 1.3 billion users in over 100 languages.”
CoRover’s AI platform powers chatbots and customer service applications for major private and public sector customers, such as the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation, the official provider of online tickets, drinking water and food for India’s railways stations and trains.
Dubbed AskDISHA, after the Sanskrit word for direction, the IRCTC’s multimodal chatbot handles more than 150,000 user queries daily, and has facilitated over 10 billion interactions for more than 175 million passengers to date. It assists customers with tasks such as booking or canceling train tickets, changing boarding stations, requesting refunds, and checking the status of their booking in languages including English, Hindi, Gujarati and Hinglish — a mix of Hindi and English.
The deployment of AskDISHA has resulted in a 70% improvement in IRCTC’s customer satisfaction rate and a 70% reduction in queries through other channels like social media, phone calls and emails.
CoRover’s modular AI tools were developed using Nvidia NeMo, an end-to-end, cloud-native framework and suite of microservices for developing generative AI. They run on Nvidia GPUs in the cloud, enabling CoRover to automatically scale up compute resources during peak usage — such as the moment train tickets are released.
Nvidia also noted that VideoVerse, founded in Mumbai, has built a family of AI models using Nvidia technology to support AI-assisted content creation in the sports media industry — enabling global customers including the Indian Premier League for cricket, the Vietnam Basketball Association and the Mountain West Conference for American college football to generate game highlights up to 15 times faster and boost viewership. It uses Magnifi, with tech like vision analysis to detect players and key moments for short form video.
Nvidia also highlighted Mumbai-based startup Fluid AI, which offers generative AI chatbots, voice calling bots and a range of application programming interfaces to boost enterprise efficiency. Its AI tools let workers perform tasks like creating slide decks in under 15 seconds.
Karya, based in Bengaluru, is a smartphone-based digital work platform that enables members of low-income and marginalized communities across India to earn supplemental income by completing language-based tasks that support the development of multilingual AI models. Nearly 100,000 Karya workers are recording voice samples, transcribing audio or checking the accuracy of AI-generated sentences in their native languages, earning nearly 20 times India’s minimum wage for their work. Karya also provides royalties to all contributors each time its datasets are sold to AI developers.
Karya is employing over 30,000 low-income women participants across six language groups in India to help create the dataset, which will support the creation of diverse AI applications across agriculture, healthcare and banking.
Serving over a billion local language speakers with LLMs
Namaste, vanakkam, sat sri akaal — these are just three forms of greeting in India, a country with 22 constitutionally recognized languages and over 1,500 more recorded by the country’s census. Around 10% of its residents speak English, the internet’s most common language.
As India, the world’s most populous country, forges ahead with rapid digitalization efforts, its government and local startups are developing multilingual AI models that enable more Indians to interact with technology in their primary language. It’s a case study in sovereign AI — the development of domestic AI infrastructure that is built on local datasets and reflects a region’s specific dialects, cultures and practices.
These public and private sector projects are building language models for Indic languages and English that can power customer service AI agents for businesses, rapidly translate content to broaden access to information, and enable government services to more easily reach a diverse population of over 1.4 billion individuals.
To support initiatives like these, Nvidia has released a small language model for Hindi, India’s most prevalent language with over half a billion speakers. Now available as an Nvidia NIM microservice, the model, dubbed Nemotron-4-Mini-Hindi-4B, can be easily deployed on any Nvidia GPU-accelerated system for optimized performance.
Tech Mahindra, an Indian IT services and consulting company, is the first to use the Nemotron Hindi NIM microservice to develop an AI model called Indus 2.0, which is focused on Hindi and dozens of its dialects.
Indus 2.0 harnesses Tech Mahindra’s high-quality fine-tuning data to further boost model accuracy, unlocking opportunities for clients in banking, education, healthcare and other industries to deliver localized services.
The Nemotron Hindi model has 4 billion parameters and is derived from Nemotron-4 15B, a 15-billion parameter multilingual language model developed by Nvidia. The model was pruned, distilled and trained with a combination of real-world Hindi data, synthetic Hindi data and an equal amount of English data using Nvidia NeMo, an end-to-end, cloud-native framework and suite of microservices for developing generative AI.
The dataset was created with Nvidia NeMo Curator, which improves generative AI model accuracy by processing high-quality multimodal data at scale for training and customization. NeMo Curator uses Nvidia RAPIDS libraries to accelerate data processing pipelines on multi-node GPU systems, lowering processing time and total cost of ownership.
It also provides pre-built pipelines and building blocks for synthetic data generation, data filtering, classification and deduplication to process high-quality data.
After fine-tuning with NeMo, the final model leads on multiple accuracy benchmarks for AI models with up to 8 billion parameters. Packaged as a NIM microservice, it can be easily harnessed to support use cases across industries such as education, retail and healthcare.
It’s available as part of the Nvidia AI Enterprise software platform, which gives businesses access to additional resources, including technical support and enterprise-grade security, to streamline AI development for production environments. A number of Indian companies are using the services.
India’s AI factories can transform economy
India’s leading cloud infrastructure providers and server manufacturers are ramping up accelerated data center capacity in what Nvidia calls AI factories. By year’s end, they’ll have boosted Nvidia GPU
deployment in the country by nearly 10 times compared to 18 months ago.
Tens of thousands of Nvidia Hopper GPUs will be added to build AI factories — large-scale data centers for producing AI — that support India’s large businesses, startups and research centers running AI workloads in the cloud and on premises. This will cumulatively provide nearly 180 exaflops of compute to power innovation in healthcare, financial services and digital content creation.
Announced today at the Nvidia AI Summit, this buildout of accelerated computing technology is led by data center provider Yotta Data Services, global digital ecosystem enabler Tata Communications, cloud service provider E2E Networks and original equipment manufacturer Netweb.
Their systems will enable developers to harness domestic data center resources powerful enough to fuel a new wave of large language models, complex scientific visualizations and industrial digital twins that could propel India to the forefront of AI-accelerated innovation.
Yotta Data Services is providing Indian businesses, government departments and researchers access to managed cloud services through its Shakti Cloud platform to boost generative AI adoption and AI education.
Powered by thousands of Nvidia Hopper GPUs, these computing resources are complemented by Nvidia AI Enterprise, an end-to-end, cloud-native software platform that accelerates data science pipelines and streamlines development and deployment of production-grade copilots and other generative AI applications.
With Nvidia AI Enterprise, Yotta customers can access Nvidia NIM, a collection of microservices for optimized AI inference, and Nvidia NIM Agent Blueprints, a set of customizable reference architectures for generative AI applications. This will allow them to rapidly adopt optimized, state-of-the-art AI for applications including biomolecular generation, virtual avatar creation and language generation.
“The future of AI is about speed, flexibility and scalability, which is why Yotta’s Shakti Cloud platform is designed to eliminate the common barriers that organizations across industries face in AI adoption,” said Sunil Gupta, CEO of Yotta, in a statement. “Shakti Cloud brings together high-performance GPUs, optimized storage and a services layer that simplifies AI development from model training to deployment, so organizations can quickly scale their AI efforts, streamline operations and push the boundaries of what AI can accomplish.”
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Cash collection startup Upflow also wants to handle B2B payments
Upflow, a French startup we’ve been covering for quite a while, originally focused on managing outstanding invoices. The company is now announcing a shift in its strategy to become a B2B payment platform with its own payment gateway to complement its accounts receivable automation solution.
Like many software-as-a-service products, Upflow started by building a central hub specifically designed for one job in particular: CFOs. From the Upflow dashboards, CFOs and finance teams could see all their company’s invoices, track payments, communicate with team members, and send reminders to clients.
It integrates nicely with other financial tools and services to automatically import data from those third-party services. And a tool like Upflow can be particularly important as many tech companies struggle to raise their next funding round and want to improve their cash balance.
But that was just the first step in a bigger roadmap.
“Basically, my vision has always been that the real problem is payment methods,” Upflow co-founder and CEO Alexandre Louisy (pictured above) told TechCrunch. “Today, when you pay in a store, you pay with your phone. When you pay for your Spotify subscription or your Amazon subscription, you don’t even think about how you pay.”
“But when you look at B2B payments, the way you pay today hasn’t changed in the last 50 years. And for us, that’s why people struggle with late payments. The thing I’m really trying to fight against is the idea that late payments are linked to bad payers.“
According to him, around 90% of B2B payments still happen offline in the U.S. It’s still mostly paper checks. In Europe, it’s a different story as companies have adopted bank transfers. But transfers “are completely unstructured and require manual reconciliation,” Louisy said.
Upflow sells its accounts receivable automation software tool to midsized companies with a revenue between $10 million and $500 million per year. The company’s biggest client generates around $1 billion in annual revenue.
“But when you ask [CFOs], ‘What’s your strategy for setting up direct debit on part of your customer base?’ They don’t have a solution,” Louisy said.
Upflow helps you set up incentive strategies so that a portion of your client base moves to online payments, such as card payments or direct debits. The idea isn’t that all your clients are going to pay with a business card overnight. But Upflow can help you change the payment method for something like 20% or 30% of your client base.
Just like CRMs help you manage your sales processes with clients, Upflow now wants to be a financial relationship management (FRM) solution. It’s an interesting strategy as it shows how a startup like Upflow is thinking about diversifying its revenue sources.
“With our model shift, we’re moving from a model where we are 100% based on SaaS revenue to a hybrid model where we have SaaS revenue and payment revenue because we have our own payment gateway that we’ve set up with Stripe,” Louisy said.
Payment is the second brick in Upflow’s product suite. Up next, the company plans to integrate financing options with B2B “buy now, pay later” payment methods on the supplier front and factoring for a company’s outstanding invoices.
“We evaluate solutions … that provide embedded finance,” Louisy said. ”It’s not our core business to perform risk assessment. On the other hand, what’s interesting is that we can bring them useful data for credit scoring that they don’t necessarily have when they just connect to one of our users’ accounts.”
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