Jaspreet Bindra: “It is agents that will finally bring GenAI to enterprises. Finance teams are trying out agents that monitor cash flow anomalies at 3am and file ledger fixes before humans log in. E-commerce firms are letting agents test storefront copy and take the better one live. In manufacturing, prototype maintenance agents read sensor data, cross-check manuals and schedule down time. Professional services giants are piloting ‘first draft’ research partners that read contracts, assemble evidence and even initiate further information requests. Agents will transform service-as-a-software, with users paying for services delivered by orchestrated agents rather than for access to software.”
Wired: “When the Apple Watch launched, it was unclear if smartwatches would pan out. Ten years later, Apple has a $100 billion hit that reshaped the watch industry and ushered in a new age of fitness tracking.”
NYTimes: “China’s secret weapon in the trade war is an army of factory robots, powered by artificial intelligence, that have revolutionized manufacturing. Factories are being automated across China at a breakneck pace. With engineers and electricians tending to fleets of robots, these operations are bringing down the cost of manufacturing while improving quality…Factories are now more automated in China than in the United States, Germany or Japan. China has more factory robots for every 10,000 manufacturing workers than any other country except South Korea or Singapore, according to the International Federation of Robotics.”
FT: “Proponents argue that AI has the potential to revolutionise games from both the developer and player sides. For makers, they could create visual assets ranging from characters to 3D models; write code, storylines and dialogue; generate whole environments and even synthesise vocal performances without the need for actors. For gamers, the prospect is both potentially more thrilling but more of a distant prospect: a “living game” could use generative AI to adjust landscapes and settings according to players’ tastes and behaviours. An inhospitable desert might transform into a lush forest when you’re in need of calm, you could converse with computer characters using your own natural speech, and a game might adjust its difficulty when you’re struggling in combat encounters.”
Mint: “India’s global startup playbook, built for SaaS and scale, is ill-suited for deeptech, defined by startups working at the frontier of science and engineering. Foundational innovation takes longer, costs more and requires an entirely different kind of ecosystem. Unlike consumer internet startups that scale quickly with venture capital funding, deeptech ventures face long gestation cycles, intensive and expensive research and development (R&D) and often also a scarcity of patient capital. Their milestones and breakthroughs rarely make headlines, even though they represent some of the country’s most sophisticated tech efforts. Many founders navigate various bottlenecks, from limited access to testing labs to a fragmented pool of scientific talent all while balancing global competition and uncertain revenue models. Funding is a challenge, as is their ability to build cross-disciplinary teams and navigate regulatory hurdles.” Rest of World: “Today, China commands 30% of global manufacturing output, while India lags at 3%. India’s services-led mindset and decades of underinvestment in innovation have left the country scrambling to catch up in the global tech race, according to industry analysts, government stakeholders, and academics. “China’s ecosystem is different. They already have the manufacturing prowess, which they built over time. So, for them to make a product which can be put into the market is not that difficult,” Pranay Kotasthane, chair of the High-Tech Geopolitics Programme at Takshashila Institution, a Bengaluru-based think tank, [said]. India remains a “service-focused” tech ecosystem — a space where the country beats China “hands down,” he said.”
