Kemo Sabe Cowboy Hats, Worn by Beyoncé and Kevin Costner, Rise to Fame in Aspen

Kemo Sabe Cowboy Hats, Worn by Beyoncé and Kevin Costner, Rise to Fame in Aspen




Kemo Sabe Cowboy Hats, Worn by Beyoncé and Kevin Costner, Rise to Fame in Aspen

Beyoncé, Shania Twain, Kevin Costner and many reality TV regulars are loyal customers of Kemo Sabe hats. The shop in Aspen can’t believe its luck.

Cisco Buys Splunk for $28 Billion, Betting Big on Data and Security

Cisco Buys Splunk for $28 Billion, Betting Big on Data and Security




Cisco Buys Splunk for $28 Billion, Betting Big on Data and Security

Cisco completed its $28 billion acquisition of the data analytics company Splunk on Monday, making a major push into the rapidly growing markets for cybersecurity and observing the digital operations of companies and organisations.

The deal, one of the largest in the technology industry in recent years, underscores how critically important data has become as companies ramp up their use of artificial intelligence and other data-hungry technologies. Cisco, long dominant in computer networking equipment, is positioning itself to capitalise on those trends.

“We are thrilled to officially welcome Splunk to Cisco,” Chuck Robbins, Cisco’s chair and chief executive, said in a statement. “As one of the world’s largest software companies, we will revolutionise the way our customers leverage data to connect and protect every aspect of their organisation as we help power and protect the AI revolution.”

With Splunk, Cisco gains software that helps companies monitor their digital operations, detect cyber threats and investigate security incidents across their networks, applications and devices. Splunk’s data collection and analysis tools are used by over 90 of the Fortune 100 companies.

“Uniting Splunk and Cisco will bring tremendous value to our joint customers worldwide,” said Gary Steele, the executive who will lead Splunk inside Cisco. “The combination will provide truly comprehensive visibility and insights across an organisation’s entire digital footprint.”

Cisco paid $157 per share for Splunk, whose stock had traded around $65 a share before reports emerged about a potential sale. The price tag highlights the high premiums being paid for companies in strategically important fields.

Through the acquisition, Cisco gains a major analytics platform to help companies make sense of the reams of data being generated by the billions of digital devices, clouds and apps used by businesses and organisations. With artificial intelligence taking on a bigger role, having the right data pipelines and analysis tools is seen as crucial.

“Effective use of the right data at massive scale is critical to enable the meaningful benefits of AI and help organisations drive outcomes never before possible,” Robbins said.

Robbins argued that Cisco, with its networking equipment installed across corporate and institutional networks, is now “uniquely poised” to integrate Splunk’s data capabilities with its core offerings to create what he described as “unparalleled visibility and insights” for customers.

“To truly reap the benefits of AI, organisations need the infrastructure to power it, the data to develop it, a security platform to protect it, and an observability platform to monitor and manage it in real time,” he said. “Cisco will be able to do all four together.”

Cisco’s goal is to create an integrated platform for better networking, security, observability for tracking performance of apps and systems, and tapping into artificial intelligence. Robbins said Cisco and Splunk combined would allow “customers to do things that weren’t possible before.”

Stephen Elliot, an analyst at the research firm IDC, said, “Cisco has created a unique set of solutions for networking, security and operations executives in the market.”  

Cisco said the deal would add to its revenue growth and profit margins. Splunk’s stock will cease trading on the Nasdaq exchange.

The deal pushes further consolidation in the cybersecurity industry, a decade after Cisco paid nearly $3 billion for the security firm Sourcefire. It follows recent large acquisitions by Microsoft, Google and others to beef up their data analytics, artificial intelligence and cloud computing capabilities.

Read next: Cisco teams up with Microsoft and Samsung to improve hybrid meeting experiences

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inDrive Revs Up Global Expansion with $150M Financing Boost from General Catalyst

inDrive Revs Up Global Expansion with $150M Financing Boost from General Catalyst




inDrive Revs Up Global Expansion with $150M Financing Boost from General Catalyst

Urban mobility platform inDrive is turbocharging its global growth ambitions after securing an additional $150 million in financing from longtime investor General Catalyst. The move expands the companies’ existing financing arrangement to $300 million and provides inDrive with flexible capital to accelerate expansion into new markets, innovate its product offerings, and double down on its mission of making transportation more accessible.

The fresh funding injection arrives hot on the heels of a blockbuster 2023 for the ride-hailing disruptor. InDrive’s net revenue skyrocketed 54% year-over-year, powered by the company’s unique approach that enables passengers and drivers to negotiate fares. This driver-centric model has proven to be a hit with gig workers seeking higher earnings and riders hunting for more affordable transportation options.

“Securing this financing from General Catalyst empowers us to continue our rapid growth and innovation while maintaining a strong financial position and flexibility,” said Dmitry Sedov, CFO at inDrive. “This structure is designed to support our ambitious plans without added risk, as we strive to make mobility accessible for communities worldwide.”

The funding comes as inDrive cements its status as a global ride-sharing force. According to data.ai, the platform ranked as the second most downloaded ride-hailing app globally for two consecutive years and landed among the top five most downloaded travel apps overall.

General Catalyst, an early believer in inDrive’s vision, is doubling down on its long-term partnership and the startup’s potential for disrupting urban mobility worldwide. “We are excited to help them continue scaling and expanding into new markets,” said Pranav Singhvi, Managing Director at General Catalyst. “We are enthusiastic about supporting a robust mission that positively impacts communities globally.”

With its financial runway extended, inDrive is primed to challenge incumbents and conventional models within the $1 trillion mobility services industry. The company’s unique negotiated fare system, backed by AI-powered routing and pricing algorithms, has already gained significant traction across 47 countries and over 680 cities.

Looking ahead, the funding will allow inDrive to continue challenging social injustice and spearheading equitable access to transportation solutions that empower both riders and drivers. The platform’s rising popularity reflects a hunger for urban mobility services centered around fairness, flexibility and putting more earnings into the pockets of gig workers.

Read next: 5 golden rules to enable funding for SMEs

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Sungrow Unveils Powerful New Solar + Battery System for Homes and Businesses in South Africa

Sungrow Unveils Powerful New Solar + Battery System for Homes and Businesses in South Africa




Sungrow Unveils Powerful New Solar + Battery System for Homes and Businesses in South Africa

Solar power solutions company Sungrow has launched a new line of three-phase hybrid inverters and battery energy storage systems for the South African market. The systems are designed for both residential and commercial/industrial applications, offering scalable and efficient energy solutions.

For homes, Sungrow’s new single-phase inverters come in 6kW and 10kW models. The real stars, however, are the three-phase hybrid inverter options at 15kW, 20kW, and 25kW capacity. “Last year, we were mainly focused on launching our single-phase inverter that was mainly dedicated to residential households. But now we’re seeing that the attention and focus in South Africa is moving towards low commercial and industrial applications, and for those kinds of loads, we typically require a three-phase hybrid inverter,” said Ezzat Sankari, Sungrow Middle East and Africa channel business director.

These inverters can be paired with Sungrow’s 9.5kWh or 25.6kWh lithium ferro phosphate batteries to create a hybrid solar + storage system. The three-phase design provides more power for energy-intensive appliances and equipment in large homes or small-to-medium businesses.

“The system deploys high voltage lithium ferro phosphate, which by nature of the circuit architecture makes the losses internally inside the inverter much less,” explained Sankari. Sungrow engineer Leonard Visser added that the high system voltage allows smaller cable cross-sections, reducing overall losses.

The units feature three maximum power point trackers to optimise roof solar installations of different orientations. They also utilise Sungrow’s patented PID Zero technology to prevent long-term degradation of solar panels from potential induced degradation (PID), which can reduce power output by up to 30%.

For larger applications, the inverters are paralleled with up to 890kWh of battery capacity across 32 batteries. Sungrow offers a potent 125kW string inverter for commercial and industrial (C&I) use cases. The system’s 10ms changeover time during a grid outage enables seamless backup operation.

“With that being said, you can start your battery capacity from 25.6kWh up until 890.2kWh,” said Visser. He claimed the batteries offer 100% depth of discharge over 6,000 cycles, outlasting competing products.

Visser highlighted the system’s strong safety features, like an arc-fault circuit interrupter that can isolate faults across 200m of solar cables in 200ms. The system also integrates with Sungrow’s iSolar cloud monitoring app for tracking real-time energy consumption.

With 40% of its workforce in R&D, Sungrow continues innovating sustainable energy tech like hydrogen energy storage systems and EV charging infrastructure. Their new three-phase hybrid system marks a major step in deploying resilient and cost-effective solar for South Africa’s residential and C&I sectors.

Read next: Lulalend commits to fuelling solar SMEs in SA

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With AI technology tailor-made in Africa, the sky’s the limit

With AI technology tailor-made in Africa, the sky’s the limit




With AI technology tailor-made in Africa, the sky’s the limit

With so many hyperbolic claims and counter-claims being made about Artificial Intelligence (AI), it’s hard to know what to think. Should we be hopeful or afraid, excited or sceptical? Is any of this actually going to make a difference to our lives any time soon?

While today’s generative AI tools can do amazing things, they are still nowhere near human-level intelligence. They are, in effect, highly sophisticated pattern recognition machines. But while they can’t think for themselves, they are remarkable problem-solving tools. They’re already helping to accelerate medical and scientific research and making a big difference in a range of industries.

Across the South African economy, AI tools have the potential to boost productivity enormously. And they can help us in our everyday lives. AI assistants could provide tailored support when we need it and help us all to get more done in our days. Soon, we’ll be rolling out our Meta AI virtual assistant to WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram users in Nigeria and South Africa, alongside those in a number of other countries in Africa and elsewhere, which you can use to answer questions with real-time information and generate images from your text prompts to share across your favourite app.

As more and more people, businesses and organisations get to grips with how AI tools can help them solve problems, they could create huge economic and social opportunities. But that’s going to take time, and it is going to require that AI tools are tailored to the specific needs South Africans have.

That’s what Jacaranda Health has done with its AI-enabled digital health service, PROMPTS, which is designed to help expecting mothers across Sub-Saharan Africa. PROMPTS sends women text messages in Swahili tracked to their stages of pregnancy. It also has an AI-enabled helpdesk that uses natural language processing to triage and respond to their questions, and makes rapid referrals if a risk is identified. With Meta’s support, Jacaranda aims to expand PROMPTS to 1.3 million women across the region. To do all this, Jacaranda developed an AI tool that understands Swahili, built on Meta’s open source Llama 2 foundation model.

The computing power required to build and operate foundational AI models can be vast and expensive, which is why so few companies have them. Most of those companies are in the United States, but generative AI is not going to have the sort of transformative effect that people hope it will in South Africa unless people are using AI tools designed with the needs of South Africans in mind. That’s why it’s so important that many of these models are open and accessible, so more Africans can do what Jacaranda has done and adapt them for Africans to use.

Meta has a long history of sharing AI technologies like PyTorch, the leading machine learning framework, and our Llama large language models. And we’ve published more than 1,000 AI open source models and tools, including our “Seamless” suite of AI research models that can translate your own voice into another language.

I’m in South Africa this week to meet policymakers, academics, experts and entrepreneurs and talk about open source AI and how Meta can support the growing digital economy here. Africa has a young, tech-savvy population that is brimming with creativity. In little over a decade, it could have the largest workforce in the world. The continent is on the cusp of becoming a major centre for innovation. We want to be part of that.

That’s why we’ve rolled out programmes like Boost with Meta and #SheMeansBusiness, reaching millions of small businesses across the continent and helping more than 350,000 entrepreneurs develop their skills. And it’s why we’ve laid tens of thousands of subsea and terrestrial fibre cables, such as 2Africa, helping to generate tens of billions of dollars for African economies.

This is good for Africa and good for Meta. We want Africans to build amazing things with our technologies. Better products, faster innovation and a flourishing market in Africa will benefit Meta as it will many others. With fast internet access and AI technology tailor-made for Africa’s needs, challenges and opportunities, the sky’s the limit.

By Nick Clegg, Meta President, Global Affairs

Read next: Fostering an inclusive future: Navigating the AI race in South Africa

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What to expect in the next era of AI in banking

What to expect in the next era of AI in banking




What to expect in the next era of AI in banking

The rapid evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to radically reshape how banks operate from front to back.  This wave of artificial intelligence will have a lasting impact on employees, customers, and regulators as it becomes more ubiquitous. Banks will need to navigate technology and organisational change with a renewed emphasis on collaboration in order to execute on their AI strategy.

Generative AI is a potent new tool in the bank’s arsenal. It can take on more of the burden for customer servicing and reduce the toil of back office operations. In the short term, the positive impact will be on the bottom line, but we believe that this next era of artificial intelligence will be critical to value creation for banks and undoubtedly shift the competitive landscape. While the opportunities are vast, there are many challenges that banks will need to address to maximise AI’s potential.

The future of artificial intelligence in banking

Banks have a long history of using predictive AI to automate and streamline operations within the bank. For example, using patterns to reconcile payments or assist debt collection by predicting who is the most likely to repay. However, there is a significant opportunity to expand the use of AI to other areas of the bank to boost sales, manage risk and optimise operations as we look to the future of banking.

From customer acquisition and onboarding to advisory, banks have the opportunity to enhance how they are reaching and interacting with potential customers along with creating new value streams. There are many ways that AI can enhance customer satisfaction and retention, while making it faster to acquire and onboard new customers. AI can help identify potential clients more efficiently by using predictive analytics, customer onboarding can be fully automated and create an enhanced customer experience with more personalised products and services.

AI can also help banks’ operations and servicing teams when used to boost processing and support, reducing wait times and improving operational efficiency. Financial advice could be more intelligent and adaptive to changing conditions, exception handling in banking could be sped up and AI-powered assistants could handle more complex customer inquiries and problems in a more conversational and less robotic tone. Additionally, financial reporting in banking could be streamlined with the use of AI, automating data compilation and analysis for more accurate and timely reports.

AI will play a significant role in a bank’s ability to keep pace with market change. With the ability to analyse large data sets, risk modeling in banking can be much more robust and dynamic to predict and mitigate market risks more accurately. Furthermore, AI could better detect financial crime by using sophisticated pattern recognition to identify suspicious transactions and reduce false positives.

Challenges of scaling AI across the bank

While the future of AI in banking looks promising, scaling AI adoption won’t come without challenges. Adopting AI technology involves technical adjustments as well as shifts in customer expectations and organisational practices. As banks consider deeper integration inside the organisation, it’s important to recognise the hurdles that may arise and be prepared to overcome them.

Many obstacles are likely to present themselves on the path to expanding AI to new areas related to product, data, compliance, operations and talent acquisition and training.

Expanding AI adoption throughout a banking organisation, across delivery teams and operations is a significant challenge, especially when the pace of change continues to increase. Making AI more approachable to these groups with the tools they need will be key to deepening its impact.

Scaling AI will require a platform that brings these teams together with the tools they need.

Banks also have to navigate a plethora of other issues like convincing customers who are untrusting of AI to use AI-based services, data privacy and security, as well as hiring and retaining AI professionals who are skilled in both data science and the banking business. Though these issues may seem like a big undertaking, understanding the necessary capabilities and finding the right partners and tools to facilitate the integration of AI makes all the difference.

Trustworthiness will be key

Using AI in new areas of the bank can raise new concerns about privacy, accuracy and fairness. This will require bolstering how data is sourced and models are managed, so that clients and regulators can better understand how AI is being used. Monitoring for model bias and drift is a key capability to ensure that banks continuously assess and adjust their AI models to prevent inaccuracies and biases. Regular audits and reports to regulators are necessary to maintain compliance and transparency in AI usage. For example, our integration with watsonx.governance enables banks to effectively manage model risk.

Red Hat is helping banks across the globe scale AI adoption, helping them get more value out of AI without leaving their investments stranded. Red Hat® OpenShift® AI gives teams the ability to train, tune and serve models across any cloud. It provides a modern platform for bringing data scientists together with developers to scale artificial intelligence across the organisation.

By fostering strong partnerships and offering adaptable solutions, Red Hat helps financial institutions navigate the complexities of AI adoption. Learn more about how Red Hat technology can help you expand AI to new areas of the bank.

By Steven Huels, General Manager, AI Business Unit

Read next: Xero unveils AI assistant to revolutionise small business accounting

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Execution is more vital than strategy for startup success

Execution is more vital than strategy for startup success




Execution is more vital than strategy for startup success

Strategy sets the course for startups, but without team alignment and pragmatic action business will fail. After ten years of building capacity for thousands of entrepreneurs in Africa, Asia and Europe, the one thing I know to be true is that smart-thinking founders who favour pragmatic action and team alignment over everything else win. 

Starting, running, and growing a successful business is no easy feat. Founders navigate the first year facing the dreaded statistic of a 70% potential failure rate. If a startup is lucky enough to make it through the first year, the chance of not making it drops to 35% by year three. 

The cruel truth as to why so many emerging businesses die? Poor execution, bad execution, and focusing on the wrong thing to execute ranks high amongst the reasons. But there’s a lot that founders can do about this.  

  1. Execution is a competitive differentiator

In a volatile, uncertain, unpredictable world, strategies too often live on a server somewhere. Having an idea is the easier and less valuable part of the business. Marshalling the resources and humans needed to execute the business strategy is a completely different story. This is the hardest thing to do in business, which is why founders who have teams that nimbly execute well on strategy harness a major competitive differentiator.  

Clearly defining the roles and responsibilities in a fast-moving, growing business is masterful. Ensuring that the metrics, targets and rewards are in place to empower this is important. Great communication is the lubrication that turns strategy into united action. Not every company excels at communication or people management and culture. Which is why execution is hard. 

  1. Founders set the tone

Outsourcing execution is disastrous – about as disastrous as trying to get someone else to realise your dreams or to live your life for you. And when it comes to execution, founders are the leaders who set the tone and create the culture that supports this. 

Founders and CEOs shape the flow on a Monday morning for how the rest of the week will pan out. Leaders set the tone with a new client when we sign the deal. And we set the tone with our team when the chips are down. Accepting how much we as founders set the tone for the present and future, is how we change this. 

  1. Rituals and rhythms

What helps good communication and activates action in teams are the rituals and rhythms of good leadership, communication and project management. In business, feedback is the breakfast of champions and regular rituals that champion and measure execution is a massive difference maker. Those companies that make the time to do project management well, and enable an adult culture where teams take accountability, innovate and own things goes a long way to building businesses. 

 I asked Mamela Luthuli, a leader in the technology industry who is one of the best trailblazers I know when it comes to leadership and execution what her secret to execution is. This go-getter recently won the IT Personality of the Year Award from the Institute of Information Technology Professionals South Africa for her achievements.  

 This is what Luthuli told me: “Execution is when the rubber hits the road. The best way to execute is to keep it simple and actionable. It is also extremely important to be an example to your team because they will follow suit by becoming doers,” she says. 

 “Execution works hand in hand with strategy — the real trick is to ensure that everyone buys into the strategy and is aligned about what needs to get done in the business,” Luthuli adds. “Execution needs great leadership with effective communication. Leaders must communicate the purpose and vision of a company convincingly and consistently. This isn’t a once-off but is a process. It is something you do repeatedly to get buy in from your team. To drive great execution, communicate clearly and create a culture of getting things done on time and done well.” 

 Execution is a people thing; it is about culture and relationships. When founders get this consistently right it becomes a compounding force that truly scales sustainable businesses. 

Words by Catherine Young 

Catherine Young is the founder of Thinkroom Consulting and Thinkubate. She is also Managing Partner of Grindstone and Grindstone Ventures. As the founder of Thinkroom, Young is involved in entrepreneurial ecosystem development across Africa and has grown businesses into Southeast Asia and the UK. A SME ecosystem influencer in Africa, Young works with clients in the space of entrepreneurship development across the continent. 

 

Read next: Tunisia’s Startup Village sparks collaborative success

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