Pine Labs sells stakes of $125 M; Microsoft becomes third-most valuable company in the world

Global technology major IBM launched its AI-powered enterprise marketing cloud services in India. These will be hosted at its data centre in Chennai. The launch will let customers host their marketing data on the local cloud data centre, giving them proximity, scalability, and helping them meet regulatory requirements.

After disrupting the domestic FMCG industry, Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali has turned its attention towards another fast-moving, fast-evolving space – communication and technology. Within a span of two days, Patanjali announced its partnership with state-owned telecom operator BSNL to sell Swadeshi Samriddhi SIM cards and also rolled out an instant messaging app, Kimbho. Strangely enough, the app disappeared from the Google Play Store, the App Store as well as its own webpage in a day.

Digital payments player and retail PoS solution provider Pine Labs announced that Singapore-based Temasek and global technology platform PayPal Holdings Inc. have acquired a minority stake in the company for a combined $125 million. The news of the fundraising comes just two months after the company announced its $82 million funding round, led by Actis Capital and new investor Altimeter Capital.

Microsoft became the third-most valuable corporation in the world after surpassing Google parent Alphabet’s market cap on May 30. Microsoft’s valuation now stands at $753 billion, while Alphabet is worth $742 billion. Apple and Amazon lead with market caps of $924 billion and $783 billion respectively.

Mary Meeker revealed her much-awaited annual Internet Report at the Code Conference in California. The report revealed some interesting facts and figures about the global digital economy, including the budding internet population around the world (3.6 billion, or about half the world’s people), the growth rate for the smartphone sector in 2017 (0 percent), key drivers of economic growth in the years to come (ranging from AI to healthcare), and more.

Chinese firm SenseTime, the world’s most valuable AI company with a valuation of $4.5 billion, announced that it had closed a fresh Series C+ funding round, raising $620 million from investment firms such as Fidelity International, Hopu Capital, Silver Lake, and Tiger Global as well as existing investor Qualcomm Ventures. The firm has raised $1.6 billion since its founding in 2014, including $1.2 billion in the last two months alone.

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