Daily Archives: November 5, 2021

From healthcare to agriculture, tech industry giants seem intent on expanding their influence across every sector of the global economy. Left unchecked by the powers that be in Washington, the big four tech companiesAmazon, Google, Apple, and Facebookwill continue to swallow up vast new swaths of the economy, and this is precisely what is at stake in Biden era antitrust policy and enforcement.

Big Tech's obsession with expanding into that future marketand further entrenching their monopoly poweris well-documented but hasn't received much attention.

If you want to see where things are headed and the risks ahead, just look at the trajectory of the automotive industry as it transitions to the electric and autonomous vehicles likely to dominate the market in the future. Big Tech's obsession with expanding into that future marketand further entrenching their monopoly poweris well-documented but hasn't received much attention.

In fact, far from a fantasy of tech executives, Big Tech already has made a considerable mark. Apple has worked tirelessly to develop the "Apple Car," going so far as to seek active consultation from the likes of Nissan and Hyundai. Waymo (formerly the "Google Self-Driving Car Project") remains a priority of Google parent company Alphabet. Outside the realm of autonomous vehicle technology, Google's Android operating system is now a widespread feature in new cars. Amazon is one of Rivian's largest investors. And many analysts even expect Facebook to enter the industry sooner or later.

After decades of declining antitrust enforcement, Big Tech giants have little incentive not to leverage their platform dominance to occupy a larger part of the industry. Indeed, the autonomous taxi market alone is projected to become a $2 trillion market by 2030, and tech giants are keen on dominating this sector first.

While "the merging of electric, autonomous vehicles with ride-hailing to create a radically different car economy" may sound exciting in the abstract, Big Tech's record of mistreating workers and undermining competition should be of grave concern to observers. Should Big Tech run its tried and true playbook to go after the auto industry, workers will inevitably suffer.

Google has already proved itself to be stridently anti-labor in its approach to dissenting employees. If Google has no qualms with firing the employees in its core enterprise, there's little reason to believe the tech giant will treat auto industry workers any better. Similarly, Apple's well-documented history of mistreating factory workersand relying primarily on Chinese production - should be of grave concern as the company develops the "Apple Car". In its iPhone factory in Zhengzhou, China, to name one infamous example, workers were robbed of bonus payments and adequate safety training.

The prospect of a Big Tech-dominated auto industry isn't just concerning owing to tech giants' disregard for workers' welfare. In a time when corporate concentration is at critical levels, the American economy cannot afford to let Big Tech giants further entrench their economic and political power.

Even at their current sizes, Big Tech giants have violated federal law to relentlessly stifle competition. Amazon once willfully took $200 million in losses to crush a startup rival that refused to be acquired by the company. Facebook built its empire through acquisitions of services such as Instagram and WhatsApp in an all-but-explicit effort to curb the emergence of any real competitors. Imagine how they would act if they get dramatically bigger.

And then there are the data privacy and security implications. Big Tech already profits enough off of knowing where you go and what you search for. Gaining a foothold in the auto industry means they can turn actions as basic as how hard you break or when you turn headlights on into profitable data points. Big Tech's disregard for privacy can be seen in accusations that Apple's Siri records users without consent and that Amazon records children who use Echo Dot Kids. Amazon reportedly stores the resulting data in the cloud and prevents parents from deleting it, similar to how Google continues to track Android users' locations when location services are disabled. Apple and Google have both stayed silent after users' data was compromised, and Amazon insiders have sounded the alarm on the possibility the company's negligence could lead to users' data being exposed.

Big Tech's foray into the auto industry is one example of many of where things are headed if these companies are left unchecked. Regulators should keep these concerns in mind before approving any future mergers or acquisitions, and they should pursue vigorous antitrust policies before things get even more out of hand. Enough is enough.

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Opinion | Big Tech Wants to Take the Wheel - Common Dreams

Dan Perry is managing partner of the Thunder11 communications agency. He previously headed the Associated Press in the Middle East, Europe and Africa.

Jonathan "Yoni" FrenkelContributor

On the surface, its impressive that Israel has nearly as many unicorns as the European Union with a population almost 50 times smaller. It may seem odd to suggest that the gap can grow still larger. And yet, it is so.

The tech ecosystem is like a flywheel. When founders sell or go public, money floods into the ecosystem in three ways. The first, obviously, is the injection of liquidity from investors.

The second effect is the creation of new investors. There is truth to the idea that the newly wealthy founders (and employees) first buy a house and then start investing in startups themselves. And third, venture capital flows to those who have shown successful innovation in the past a halo effect that is as evident in Israel as it is in San Francisco.

These things happened with early employees of companies like Google, Uber and Twitter, who became investors or founders. And a version of it is happening in Israel, where it is not uncommon for employees to manifest total conviction that they can do better than the founders who brought them riches.

Being employee No. 10 at an Israeli success story like Monday.com or SentinelOne is somewhat akin to being employee No. 15 at Uber or Instagram: The companies may offer somewhat less of a halo but not that much less. These employees-turned-founders have skills and backgrounds sought by investors. And Israeli chutzpah can sometimes do the rest.

Thats why Israel is pushing 100 unicorns privately held companies (essentially all in tech) valued at a billion dollars or more. Compare that with Europe, which has a much larger population and just 125 unicorns. It is a success so profound that it begs for explanation.

For starters, Europes business culture is far more risk-averse than Israels, for reasons grounded in its past success. There are easier ways to make a good living in much of the EU, while in Israel, with its less established legacy economy, tech entrepreneurship was long a more appealing path.

That paradigm was right for a scrappy society that has never known true peace and is composed mostly of immigrants or their children. Its an origin story that begets a spirit of adventure and also its cousins, innovation and entrepreneurship. Add to that the technology driven by the security industry and military, which are a result of the wars, and throw in mass emigration from the post-arms-race Soviet Union, and you have a story.

In a new wrinkle, add to that the COVID factor. Israel was able to come out of the pandemic somehow stronger due to an early bet on vaccines and the fact that its outside tech sector (accounting for perhaps a tenth of the workforce) was well suited for remote work. Furthermore, Israel pulled in significant VC funds during the period.

This is happening at the right time. Israeli companies, already punching above their weight in areas like cyber, fintech and SaaS, are showing tremendous promise in verticals like food tech, agritech, space tech and, of course, vaccines.

But this is where the picture grows gloomier: A major roadblock may prevent Israel from realizing this potential.

On the surface, it would appear that Israel is well equipped for supplying workers to its industry. Indeed, this data shows Israel with 135 scientists and engineers for every 10,000 citizens, more than any other developed country. But it is not enough for the demands created by the burgeoning tech sector.

The 2020 High-Tech Human Capital Report from the Israel Innovation Authority and Start-Up Nation Central found that 60% of tech firms were having trouble finding workers and that there were currently 13,000 unfilled tech job openings in the country. Various recent studies found chronic shortages of engineers; September reportedly saw 14,000 engineer vacancies.

This shortfall in supply is pushing up the cost of labor, making Israeli engineers much more expensive than their counterparts in most countries. In an era of remote work, this drives employers to outsource work to countries like Ukraine and Romania, a trend that does not bode well for continuing to bottle the special sauce of Startup Nation.

Other things are moving in the wrong direction. Israeli students international test scores in math, science and reading are plummeting compared to those of other countries, largely because of massive political dysfunction: Successive governments have allowed the unimpeded growth of ultra-religious schools that often do not teach math at all.

This relates to the wider issue of the amazing expansion of the ultra-Orthodox sector, where half the men study religion full time (and most of the other half toil in a vast religious services bureaucracy) and women are dedicated to raising more than seven children each on average. Another sector that does not participate proportionately in the tech economy is the Israeli Arab one, a historically underprivileged and underfunded community that lives with high crime rates.

One obvious approach would be to encourage ultra-Orthodox Jews and Israeli Arabs to integrate into wider Israel and be given every tool. Underfunding of the Israeli Arab towns and schools must end (a process that is beginning with baby steps this year, with an Arab party joining the new coalition), and the government must order the police to crack down on rampant criminality in the sector. Funding should be denied to any schools that do not teach math or science (one of many steps needed to integrate the ultra-Orthodox).

The Israeli government should seize the initiative through public-private partnerships the very approach that in the past helped incubate and fund promising startups that would target ways to improve the education system. The goals are the same: accelerating the economy. Israel needs to tackle education with the same gusto it directed at the Iron Dome or dealing with its adversaries.

Possibilities include improving STEM education (science, technology, engineering and math), particularly in the periphery; improving teachers pay; limiting how aggressively parents can intervene; incentivizing outside programs like Fullstack Academy and other coding academies to open schools in Israel; and working with tech giants like Wix to further develop Silicon Valley-style campuses nurturing local talent.

Starting students earlier by teaching coding and programming could help units of the military focused on R&D and cognitive areas, broadening recruitment to new population groups and, in turn, creating new employees for the tech sector.

None of this will be easy, but the cost of complacency is high. To do nothing and hope for the best is worse than nothing. It would fritter away a monumental gift that the inscrutable fates have somehow bestowed upon the Jewish state.

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Israels tech sector is on the wrong track - TechCrunch

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, who previously led AWS since its inception in 2003.

Dan DeLong/GeekWire

The $1.25 billion data-management company DataStax was on track to go public until the cloud titan Amazon Web Services came out with a competitor that threatened its business. The new service from the Amazon cloud subsidiary was built on top of the open-source database Apache Cassandra, the basis of DataStaxs flagship product.

A controversial leadership change and over 60 layoffs came soon after and made DataStaxs future look uncertain. But Chet Kapoor, its new CEO, devised a plan: Strengthen the companys appeal to developers using its loyal community of users as a bulwark against competitors. This strategy isnt unique to DataStax. Its gaining ground across several database companies, including MongoDB, Confluent, EDB, and Couchbase, that are looking to challenge the database giants.

AWS, Oracle, Microsoft, and Google still maintain a strong hold over the database market, and theyll certainly be hard to beat. But as startups look to gain share in this increasingly competitive market, theyre beginning to view developers as an important strategic advantage.

Developers are the heart of innovation and DataStax is committed to removing barriers of scale, availability, cost and complexity for developers building modern data-driven applications, Kapoor told Insider.

While the database market used to be dominated by tech titans like Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft, analysts told Insider that the old guard was starting to lose its grip on the market. From 2018 to 2020, Oracle lost 7.1% of its market share, while IBM lost 2.5%, the market-research firm IDC estimated.

Instead, business models that cater to developers are succeeding rapidly. The financial-analyst firm William Blair described MongoDBs loyal developer community as one of the firms biggest strong suits as it has a base of over 1.5 million free users. Stripe, Twilio, and Shopify are also wildly successful companies that were able to leverage the cultlike enthusiasm of their developers against competitors.

In addition, open-source companies, those based on software that is free for anyone to use, download, or modify, are taking off because of their proximity to the developer community. Confluent went public in June and now has a $15 billion market cap. Databricks announced it raised $1.6 billion in funding at a $38 billion valuation in August. And MongoDBs market cap surged to $32 billion this month.

Successful open-source projects like Spark or Kafka can be a strategic advantage because the project and related commercial companies come to market with a community of developers they can sell to, the Greylock partner and enterprise-tech investor Jerry Chen told Forbes. More generally, looking for an advantage around go-to-market or distribution is key in competing with the big cloud.

Stephen OGrady, an analyst at the developer firm RedMonk, called this shift to more developer-friendly database software the return to the general-purpose database. Rather than specialized database models, more companies are offering ones everyday programmers can use.

Companies like MongoDB, which is on track to make well over $1 billion in annual recurring revenue, are showing they can stay competitive by fostering a loyal developer following. But market leaders can deploy the same strategy of trying to keep developers happy to stomp out competition both large and small.

AWS, for example, is well on its way to making over $51 billion in revenue this year as it promises to be a one-stop shop for developers to easily deploy software in machine learning, edge computing, and artificial intelligence. And AWS and Salesforce announced a partnership to leverage their developer relationships against competitors like Microsoft.

Microsoft, Oracle, AWS, IBM, and SAP were the five largest database vendors last year, holding over 80% of the market, according to IDC. Microsofts database MySQL and AWSs PostgreSQL remain the most popular among developers, according to Stack Overflows 2021 annual survey.

But companies still want developers on their side.

As someone who lives in Silicon Valley, I can tell you developers are increasingly important right now, Rishi Jaluria, an analyst from the financial firm RBC, told Insider. Giving developers effective tools is a no-brainer.

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Database startups are gaining ground on titans like AWS and Oracle by catering to developers. Now, those tech giants are adopting the same strategy. -...

Today lets talk about how two of the worlds most important social networks settled an ancient grudge, and what it tells us about the prospects for a more open internet as tech giants work to build a metaverse.

On Wednesday, Instagram delivered an announcement nine years in the making. Since 2012, Instagram photos shared to Twitter have appeared only as plain text links. From now on, Instagram links will include a preview of the image just as they did before Instagram sold to Facebook, and competitive pressures and professional rivalries combined to worsen our collective user experience.

They said it would never happen, Instagram tweeted Wednesday. And indeed, this reversal was one that few saw coming. The path to peace involved wine, pizza, and backyard dealmaking but to really appreciate what happened, you have to start at the moment everything fell apart.

When it launched in October 2010, Instagram was maybe the easiest way to share photos to Twitter. At the time, Twitter couldnt even host photos itself; you had to post them through third-party services with confidence-inspiring names like Yfrog and Photobucket. Instagram, thanks primarily to its slick filters, quickly became one of the most popular ways to tweet photos.

There was also a personal connection between the apps founders. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey had worked with future Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom at Twitters predecessor company, Odeo, and after Instagram launched became one of its most important early supporters. Dorsey regularly tweeted Instagram photos to his large following, and soon he was joined by early-to-Twitter celebrities including Justin Bieber and Snoop Dogg. Twitter benefited from the easy photo sharing; Instagram, meanwhile, grew its user base quickly on the back of a feature that let you find your friends from Twitter on the app.

That all began to change in April 2012, when Facebook bought Instagram for $715 million. Twitter had also tried to buy the company, but lost out to Mark Zuckerberg and his promise to help Systrom and co-founder Mike Krieger reach global scale with minimal interference. Dorsey took the loss personally and stopped posting to Instagram forever. A few months later, Twitter blocked Instagrams access to its following graph, preventing users from quickly finding their friends there.

Then, in December, Facebook retaliated: photos shared from Instagram would no longer appear in the Twitter timeline. As Sarah Frier recounts in her book No Filter, Facebook executives believed enabling photo previews was only helping Twitter to grow and increase its available ad inventory. And so the company pulled the plug on link previews, and Twitter got so mad about that that it leaked a story to the New York Times alleging Systrom had perjured himself during the sale to Facebook. (Nothing ever really came of that, aside from bad feelings.)

Then nine years went by. Instagrams co-founders quit Facebook in 2018. By then, Instagram had hit 1 billion users, most of them younger than their counterparts on Facebook. Twitter entered an extended period of stasis that only began to thaw in the past two years, when the company added hundreds of employees and began rapidly shipping new products under head of product Kayvon Beykpour.

Every once in a while, the ban on Twitter link previews would come up internally, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri told me in an interview. Dorsey once sent him a direct message asking if they could work it out. But there were always higher priorities to address, and some lingering competitive concerns. (Twitter and Instagram compete more directly on photo sharing in Japan, for example, he said.) And so nothing happened.

Twitter, meanwhile, was increasingly open to cross-platform partnerships. It started a popular and hilarious Instagram account. It enabled the sharing of tweets directly to Instagram stories. It also began embedding YouTube videos directly in tweets.

I saw a Verge story about that last item and, in the obnoxious fashion of many journalists, quote-tweeted it with a mild dunk. Now do Instagram photos. Thanks! I posted in March. Wed like to. Takes two to tango, Beykpour clapped back. I tagged in Mosseri and asked if I could interest him in a tango. Mosseri responded with a GIF of a man dancing alone in kitchen.

I then promptly forgot any of this had ever happened.

Until yesterday, when Beykpour told me that, improbably, this interaction had somehow triggered a series of events that led to him and Mosseri eating pizza in Bruce Falcks backyard.

Credit to Adam, Beykpour told me this week. When I asked, I had zero expectation that it would happen. Just because, at this point, its lore like, it was not bound to be, because the gods had forbidden it.

Falck is head of revenue products for Twitter. Before that, he was CEO of an ad tech company called Turn, where he got to know a longtime former employee named Vishal Shah, who left just before Falck took over. Shah went on to become head of product at Instagram; as of August, his title is vice president of metaverse.

After the Twitter tango exchange, Falck reached out to his old friend Shah to see if he and their bosses would be amenable to a parley. It was May, and COVID anxieties in the Bay Area were still simmering. And so instead of meeting at a restaurant, the foursome met up for pizza in Falcks backyard.

Beykpour and Mosseri had met in passing before, including once on a plane to South by Southwest. But they had never spent an extended amount of time together until that evening.

In the end, it was Beykpour who broached the subject.

We had some wine, we had some sausages, and then I finally brought it up, Beykpour said.

Mosseri told Beykpour, as he later told me, that Instagram didnt have a philosophical objection to showing photos in the timeline. Rather, it was a matter of freeing up some engineers to work on it. Mosseri said he would look into it.

In the moment, Beykpour wasnt sure if he believed him.

We were like, Okay, thats nice, Beykpour said. And we didnt expect it was gonna go anywhere. But it did.

Unbeknownst to the Twitter team, Mosseri kept a list of what he called finally features stuff that could be built relatively easily that the user base had been clamoring for. Its the low-hanging fruit of the product world stuff like letting everyone add links to their stories, a feature Instagram shipped last week.

Theyre not really a priority to the company strategically, but sometimes youve just gotta make time for that kind of work, he said.

Back at his home office, Mosseri said he had only two real questions about switching link previews back on. One, would it create a competitive risk to Instagram? And two, would it create value for the user base?

In the end, he wasnt confident he would be able to measure either risk accurately. But it seemed like users would like it, he said, and so he peeled off a couple engineers to start testing it.

You know what, why not just do a little bit more of what people are asking for, he remembers himself thinking. It seems like a good thing to do.

Testing took a couple months, but by this week it was ready. Beykpour told me he was grateful to Mosseri for working with Twitter even if hes already needling his rival in the hopes of getting Instagram to adopt large image previews, rather than small ones. (Developers get to choose which of Twitters embed formats they use; when I asked Mosseri about it, he said Instagram was just starting small.)

Meanwhile, Mosseri recently held a hackathon to work on more finally features, some of which will be shipping soon. (An iPad app is not among them, he volunteered before I could ask.) And he seemed to be enjoying the newfound spirit of goodwill with Twitter.

I think its good to bury old hatchets, he said.

Particularly given his parent companys ambitious to build a world in which companies are much more integrated than they are today a goal Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared with me in announcing the companys pivot to the metaverse this summer.

More and more, platforms are going to need to figure out how to be more open, Mosseri said. And thats tricky. Data portability has huge privacy implications. I think we need to figure that out as an industry.

In the end, though, the only thing thing that was truly needed to end the Instagram-Twitter feud was time and a willingness to put users needs ahead of strategic anxieties.

People dont live on one product, Beykpour said, noting the Twitter had also launched an integration with Snapchat last December. Theyre navigating in between them. So making those making those traversals feel convenient and colorful, I think, is important.

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How Instagram and Twitter buried the hatchet - The Verge

An incubator or accelerator programme for startups is the same as college for students. These programmes are directed towards early-stage startups to help them better understand the ecosystem, gain knowledge, get access to mentorship, expertise and interact with investors for potential fund raises.

Startups today are considered the backbone of the Indian economy. In 2021 itself, the number of Indian startups entering the unicorn club (startups valued at more than $1 billion) in India is 32, taking the total tally to 72. Today, the Department of Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade recognises up to 50,000 startups registered in India. Nurturing and helping these ever-increasing numbers of startups will help them grow and come to the benefit of all. In line with this, tech giants from across the globe have taken initiatives to further boost the thriving Indian startup ecosystem. In fact, recently, Google announced a partnership with MeitY Startup Hub to launch a growth and development programme Appscale Academy. The programme is directed towards training mid-stage startups from tier II and III cities across the country.

Today, we list five incubation programmes that tech giants lead to promote Indian startups.

Microsoft has launched a 10-week initiative Microsoft AI Innovate to support AI-powered startups in India. The programme is directed towards both B2B and B2C startups leveraging AI technologies to help them scale operations, drive innovation and build industry expertise. These startups can be from across industries education, financial services, healthcare, agriculture, space, manufacturing, e-commerce and logistics, among others.

The programme is supported by TiE Mumbai and is focused on turning meaningful innovations into actionable results and making AI accessible to everyone.

Google organises the Startups Accelerator India programme every year to focus on supporting startups that are innovating to solve meaningful challenges. This year, the tech giant organised the sixth batch to support solutions that drive scalable impact and are built using AI/ML approaches in the fields of healthcare, agritech, media and entertainment, enterprise, finance and education.

The three-month incubation programme is meant for high potential seed to Series A Indian startups that are building India-first products for the world. Shortlisted startups will receive mentorship and support around cloud, UX, Android, AI and ML, product strategy and growth, besides getting access to workshops on product designing, founders leadership development and customer acquisitions.

Hyderabad-based T-Hub has partnered with social media giant Facebook and launched the India Innovation Hub Accelerator programme. This programme focused on AI for Social Good aims to support startups focused on building services and products that solve complex social problems with the help of AI. These problems could range from domains of gender equality, economic opportunity, and climate change to innovation infrastructure, decent work, justice and peace.

Shortlisted startups get access to technical support, mentorship, and training on using Facebook products and tools. Additionally, startups will get access to Facebook Programs FbStart and resources and T-Hubs ecosystem partners.

Apple Incs App Accelerator provides opportunities to startups to learn about the companys latest advancements from its experts in Bengaluru. Additionally, candidates of the incubation programme will get to take advantage of the capabilities in iOS, iPadOS, tvOS, macOS and watchOS, allowing them to create innovative solutions.

The opportunity includes innovating hardware, software, and services, working with the Apple ecosystem and learning how to make ones apps and games more intuitive, usable, engaging and entertaining. Additionally, one will gain insights into typography, animation and navigation.

E-commerce tech giant Amazon has partnered with Startup India to launch an accelerator programme Amazon Global Selling Propel Accelerator Program, to focus on helping Indian consumer brands sell their products in global markets. The six-week programme will enable Indian businesses to speed their growth with the right kind of platform, mentorship and resources. In addition, the programme ensures one-on-one mentorship to discuss business models, pricing strategy and marketing campaigns with Amazon leaders, veteran startups, founders and VC partners.

Amazon has partnered with Sequoia Capital India and Fireside Ventures for this years flagship programme to help the shortlisted startups raise capital. The top three startups in the programme get the opportunity to win a $50,000 enquiry-free grant from Amazon.

After diving deep into the Indian startup ecosystem, Debolina is now a Technology Journalist. When not writing, she is found reading or playing with paint brushes and palette knives. She can be reached at [emailprotected]

Originally posted here:

Top 5 Incubation Programmes By Tech Giants For Indian Startups - Analytics India Magazine

PARIS, Nov. 4, 2021 Pasqal, developers of neutral atom-based quantum technology, today announced it was named Startup of the Year by LUsine Nouvelle, a leading French business news site covering economic and industrial news across industries. LUsine Nouvelles awards programs honor innovations, individuals and projects that aim to solve societys biggest challenges.

Founded in 2019 as a spin-off from Institut dOptique, Pasqal was the first startup dedicated to quantum computing in France. The company is on an accelerated growth track and expects to grow from 40 employees to 100 by the end of 2022. Pasqal raised a 25 M Series A funding round in June 2021, one of the largest series A rounds in Europe for a deep tech startup. This award comes on the heels of a momentous year for Pasqal. In 2021, the company grew its employee base by 300%, adding 30 new team members from eight different regions.

This award recognizes Pasqals tremendous contributions to the quantum ecosystem. Pasqals initiatives are aligned with the French quantum national plan and the France 2030 investment plan which identified deep tech and quantum computing as critical industries for Frances success. Pasqal aims to solve real-word challenges through quantum technology and believes it will deliver a 1000-qubit quantum processor to the market in 2023, faster than the quantum development roadmaps of the tech giants in the field. Capable of operating at room temperature, Pasqals full-stack, software-agnostic quantum processing units have the potential to address complex problems in medicine, finance and sustainability more efficiently than classical computers. Pasqals open-source library, Pulser enablesthecontrolof neutralatoms-basedprocessors at the level of laser pulses.

Pasqal is already exploring specific use cases across industries. The company is working with a leading French utility company, EDF, to optimize charging schedules for electric vehicles to combat climate change. Pasqal is also working with Crdit Agricole CIB and Multiverse Computing to design and implement new approaches running on classical and quantum computers to outperform state-of-the-art algorithms for capital markets and risk management. In addition, the company is working with Qubit Pharmaceuticals to accelerate drug discovery through quantum technology. Pasqal hopes these initial use cases will open the door to additional applications in carbon capture, energy and sustainability.

With the companys recent funding, Pasqal plans to continue innovating and developing new solutions. By the end of 2022, Pasqal plans to provide cloud access to its quantum computing services and hopes to deliver a full quantum computing device operating on the cloud by 2023.

Georges-Olivier Reymond, CEO and founder of Pasqal, accepted the award at LUsine Nouvelles Foundations of the Industry event today in Paris. The event was attended by more than 150 industry leaders and decision-makers, uniting various industry sectors in France and Europe.

Were honored to be named Startup of the Year among the many French technology startups aiming to solve the worlds biggest challenges, said Reymond. Were proud to be part of Frances hub for technology innovation, supported by the French government, and we look forward to putting our quantum technology to real-world use throughout the region.

To learn more about Pasqal and its award-winning solutions, please visit: http://www.pasqal.io.

About Pasqal

Pasqalis building quantum processors out of neutral atoms atoms possessing an equal number of electrons and protons through the use of optical tweezers using laser light, enabling the engineering of full-stack processors with high connectivity and scalability.

The company is dedicated to delivering a 1000-qubit quantum processor by 2023 to help customers achieve quantum advantage in the fields of quantum simulation and optimization across several vertical sectors, including finance, energy and supercomputing.

For more information, please contact the company:contact@pasqal.io

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Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.

Excerpt from:

Pasqal named startup of the year by L'Usine Nouvelle - EurekAlert

The Week Ending Nov. 5

Topping this weeks Came to Win list are Dell Technologies and VMware after successfully completing the spin-off of VMware as an independent company.

Also making the list this week are IBM and Kyndryl for their own successful spin-off move, CrowdStrike for a strategic acquisition in data protection, Nutanix for a key executive hire and data warehouse service provider Yellowbrick Data for an impressive funding round.

Dell Technologies Completes VMware Spin-Off

Dell Technologies and virtualization tech giant VMware this week completed the complex process of spinning off Dells 81 percent stake in VMware, creating an independent software company with a market value of approximately $64 billion.

Dell plans to use its pro rata amount of VMwares $11.5 billion special cash dividend (about $9.3 billion) to repay a portion of its huge debt load stemming from its $67 billion acquisition of EMC and VMware in 2016. Thats expected to help Dell boost its credit rating and attract new investors.

In fact, as soon as the transaction was complete three major credit ratings agencies: S&P Ratings, Fitch Ratings and Moodys, all upgraded Dells credit rating from high yield to investment grade.

For VMware, it is now a standalone company for the first time since 2004 and CEO Raghu Raghuram said VMware now has flexibility to partner with a wider range of cloud and on-premises IT infrastructure vendors and to make strategic acquisitions.

IBM Completes Kyndryl Spin-Off

In the second of a spin-off double-header this week Kyndryl, previously IBMs managed infrastructure services business, launched as an independent company on Thursday.

With nearly 90,000 employees, 4,400 customers and $19 billion in annual revenue, Kyndryl is taking aim at the increasingly competitive digital transformation market. Kyndryl has six managed service practice areas: cloud; digital workplace; security and resiliency; network and edge; core enterprise and zCloud; and applications, data and AI.

Kyndryl executives touted the companys advantages including a deep portfolio of intellectual property of more than 3,000 patents (with another 1,000 in the pipeline). Kyndryl CTO Antoine Shagoury told CRN that the company has newfound freedom to form partnerships with vendors beyond IBM.

Were taking what we already are which is a No. 1 player in the IT infrastructure services space becoming an independent company, and that gives us a new freedom to no longer be an IBM captive, CFO David Wyshner told CRN.

Kyndryl faces challenges, including reversing three consecutive years of revenue declines and net losses of $2.01 billion last year and $943 million in 2019. The companys goal is positive revenue growth in 2025.

CrowdStrike To Buy Data Protection Startup SecureCircle

Fast-rising security tech developer CrowdStrike moved to extend its capabilities into data loss prevention with a deal this week to acquire data protection startup SecureCircle.

With the acquisition CrowdStrike will extend its zero trust endpoint security device and identity capabilities to include data, allowing customers to enforce zero trust at the device level, the identity level and the data level. SecureCircles technology enforces encryption on data in transit, at rest and in use.

CrowdStrike CTO Michael Sentonas said the combination of CrowdStrike and SecureCircle will provide customers with visibility and control over how data is downloaded, used and shared across an organization.

Nutanix Hires Pure Storage, VMware Veteran As New CRO

Nutanix made a key addition to its executive ranks this week, hiring Dominick Delfino, the chief revenue officer at Pure Storage, to serve as CRO at the hyperconverged infrastructure vendor.

In addition to working at Pure for about a year, Delfino worked at VMware between 2014 and 2020, serving in a number of posts including senior vice president and general manager of the Americas.

VMware is Nutanixs chief competitive rival in the fast-growing hyperconverged infrastructure software market and in hybrid cloud software.

Nutanix has a number of former VMware executives within its management ranks including Rajiv Ramaswami, who became Nutanix CEO in late 2020 following a four-year stint as VMwares global chief operating officer of products and services.

Yellowbrick Data Raises $75M In New Funding Round

Yellowbrick Data, which is competing against industry giants such as Snowflake and Google in the cloud data warehouse arena, raised $75 million in a Series C1 round of funding this week.

The capital infusion comes as Yellowbrick says it is on track to more than double annual recurring revenue with this years bookings and has added a number of large companies in financial services, hedge funds and insurance to its customer base.

Yellowbrick has raised a total of $248 million since its 2014 founding.

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5 Companies That Came To Win This Week - CRN

A group of academic experts and tech industry leaders released a report last week asking companies to commit to updating their diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies. According to a news release, the report recommended several new hiring and data collection guidelines, among other policies, to address the under-representation of Black and Latino men and women in todays tech workforce.

The report was published and released through a consortium dubbed Catalyze Tech, spearheaded by policy research organizations such as the Aspen Institute, the National Center for Women and Information Technology, PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers), and Snap Inc., which worked together this past year to research how businesses can radically improve" workplace diversity and inclusion, according to the news release.

The tech industry remains dominated by white men, Vivian Schiller, executive director of the Aspen Institutes Aspen Digital initiative, said in a public statement. We are glad that so many tech companies are committing to implement recommendations made in this report and eager to support the sector on the path to true equity.

The companies pledged to develop strategies for meeting the reports recommendations, such as creating incentives for inclusive leadership and recruitment and recognizing DEI as a business imperative. Signatories of the report committed to solving an acute lack of computer science teachers from underrepresented backgrounds, as well as sharing demographic data with the Tech Equity Accountability Mechanism, a new industry research partner led by the Aspen Institute.

The group will convene its first annual DEI Innovation Summit this week, bringing industry leaders and diversity experts together to further discuss how to put the reports recommendations into action.

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Tech Companies Embrace Industry Diversity Recommendations - Government Technology