Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA
MoEngage, a customer engagement platform that works with consumer brands across 75 countries, says it has raised new funding led by its existing investor, Goldman Sachs Alternatives, to ramp up global growth and infuse more AI into its platform. All told, $100 million in shares just traded hands, split roughly 60% primary and 40% secondary, as part of MoEngage’s Series F round. The funding marks the entry of Indian venture firm A91 Partners as a new investor co-leading the round with Goldman Sachs Alternatives. According to MoEngage, it has now raised $250 million in funding altogether. As consumer brands increasingly…
NVIDIA and Qualcomm Ventures have joined a growing coalition of U.S. and Indian investors backing India’s deep tech startups. The group launched in September with more than $1 billion in commitments, timing that aligns with India’s new ₹1 trillion (around $12 billion) research and development initiative. NVIDIA has joined the coalition as a strategic technical advisor, without any financial commitments, while Qualcomm Ventures has come on board alongside six Indian venture firms, bringing additional capital commitments totaling more than $850 million. India is home to more than 180,000 startups and over 120 unicorns. In its early years, much of the…
This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Jad Tarifi, the founder and CEO of the AI startup Integral AI. The following has been edited for length and clarity. Business Insider has verified his employment and academic history.When I graduated from the University of Florida with a Ph.D. in AI in 2012, I didn’t see myself starting a company.My goal, both then and now, is to use AI to positively impact the world. That first led me to Google, where I worked for nearly a decade.Working at Google was a great experience. Many breakthroughs in the field that we…
Amazon has told Perplexity to get its agentic browser out of its online store, the companies both confirmed publicly on Tuesday. After warning Perplexity multiple times that Comet, its AI-powered shopping assistant, was violating Amazon’s terms of service by not identifying itself as an agent, the e-commerce giant sent the AI search engine startup a sternly worded cease-and-desist letter, Perplexity wrote in a blog post titled “Bullying is not innovation.” “This week, Perplexity received an aggressive legal threat from Amazon, demanding we prohibit Comet users from using their AI assistants on Amazon. This is Amazon’s first legal salvo against an…
The Trump administration is negotiating an agreement with pharmaceutical companies Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly to offer some of their weight loss drugs at a lower price through TrumpRx, sources familiar with the talks told ABC News.Under the pending agreements, a month’s supply of the drugs would cost roughly $149 and be covered for some Medicare beneficiaries, one source told ABC News.Discussions between the pharmaceutical companies and the administration are still ongoing, the sources said. If an agreement is reached, an announcement is expected as soon as this week, according to the sources.Endpoint News, an industry publication, first reported that…
People Inc., one of the largest media publishers in the U.S., has signed an AI licensing deal with Microsoft. The media giant (formerly known as Dotdash Meredith) made the announcement Tuesday as a part of parent company IAC’s third-quarter earnings. Under the deal, People Inc. will become a launch partner in Microsoft’s publisher content marketplace. This is the company’s second AI deal following its earlier agreement with OpenAI last year. People Inc. CEO Neil Vogel described the new marketplace as “essentially a pay-per-use market where AI players directly can compensate publishers for use of their content on, sort of like…
Who has the upper hand in the battle between Google and Disney?Disney channels, including ESPN and ABC, have been unavailable on YouTube TV since October 31, after Disney and Google’s premium TV service failed to reach a new licensing deal.Disney has a market capitalization of $200 billion. But in Big Tech terms, it’s small fry. Google parent Alphabet has a market cap of more than $3 trillion.The spat is a problem for Disney in a way that it isn’t for Google’s YouTube, said Rich Greenfield, partner and analyst at LightShed Partners. Greenfield said the drivers of investment interest in Google…
Rivian has created its second spinoff company this year: an industrial AI and robotics venture called Mind Robotics. The new effort will be focused around using “industrial AI to reshape how physical world businesses operate and leverage Rivian operations data as the foundation for a robotics data flywheel,” according to the company’s third-quarter shareholder letter published Tuesday. That’s a mouthful of buzzwords, and Rivian declined to clarify beyond that explanation. On an investor call Tuesday, Rivian CEO RJ Scaringe said his company realized it had the chance to “develop products and robotic solutions that allow us to run and operate…
Briana Vasquez, a mother of two who lives in California, said she anticipated her Affordable Care Act health insurance premiums would go up after she and her husband got married this year and she had to claim his income. But she said she wasn’t expecting just how much higher they would be without the enhanced tax credits, too.Vasquez told ABC News she currently pays about $282 a month for health insurance through ACA health care coverage for her and her two children. She said she would pay $1,003 a month for the same plan next year, when the enhanced tax…
Google announced on Tuesday that it’s launching new agentic capabilities in AI Mode, its feature that allows users to ask complex questions and follow-ups to dig deeper on a topic directly within Search. Users can now get help with booking event tickets and beauty and wellness appointments in AI Mode. For example, you can say, “Find me two cheap tickets for the Shaboozey concert coming up. Prefer standing floor tickets.” AI Mode will then search across multiple websites to find real-time ticket options that meet your specific requests. It will then present you with a curated list of ticket prices…