Larsen & Toubro (L&T) has announced a Rs. 1,327 crore all-cash deal to acquire a 21 percent stake in AI cloud provider E2E Networks, marking a strategic expansion into the growing AI and cloud services market
Image: Reuters/Shailesh Andrade
Apple faces first antitrust fine under EU’s digital markets rules
Apple is set to face the first-ever fine under the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), which was enacted to curb Big Tech’s dominance, Bloomberg reported on November 5, citing people familiar with the development. The fine, expected this month, follows allegations that Apple breached DMA provisions, including restrictions on app developers directing users to cheaper offers outside the iPhone maker’s App Store.
This builds on Apple’s ongoing antitrust troubles, following a €1.84 billion ($2 billion) fine in March over similar abuses under the bloc’s traditional competition rules involving music streaming service Spotify. Apple was also forced to pay €13 billion in back taxes to Ireland after losing a long-running court battle with the EU in September, Reuters noted, which also reported news of the DMA fine.
DMA violations could result in fines of up to 10 percent of a company’s global revenue and 20 percent for repeated infringements.
L&T acquires 21 percent stake in AI cloud provider E2E Networks
Larsen & Toubro (L&T) has announced a Rs. 1,327 crore all-cash deal to acquire a 21 percent stake in AI cloud provider E2E Networks, marking a strategic expansion into the growing AI and cloud services market, the industrial engineering giant told the stock exchanges on November 5.
The deal, which includes the purchase of 4.17 million equity shares, also establishes a partnership to integrate E2E’s cloud and AI solutions with L&T’s data centre solutions. E2E is known for introducing cloud-based GPUs in India in 2018 via a partnership with NVIDIA.
E2E, which had Rs. 94.5 crore in operational revenue for FY24, operates as an infrastructure cloud and AI/ML/GenAI cloud platform, offering GPU-as-a-Service solutions tailored to mid-sized enterprises, startups, research institutions like IITs and IIITs, and fintech firms across 10 countries, according to L&T’s stock exchange filing. It has more than 3,000 active clients, to whom it offers both NVIDIA H100 and H200 GPUs as service on its public cloud.
BNP’s monthly IT services tracker flags slowdown in EU
After an “exceptionally busy” September, IT services deal-win announcements continued to stay strong into October, according to the latest monthly tracker from the Indian unit of French multinational bank BNP Paribas.
The three-month rolling sum of deal signings, which is a strong one-quarter lead indicator of deal total contract values, remained strong in October as well and at levels similar to that in the last month, Kumar Rakesh, an analyst at BNP Paribas India, wrote in the note on November 4.
BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance) in the US and government contracts saw healthy deal announcements, but contracts in manufacturing remained muted and activity in Europe “further slowed down” Rakesh wrote. Cognizant reported the highest deal wins (3), followed by Infosys, TCS and Tech Mahindra (2 each).
In the emerging area of generative AI, there were several partnerships and launches of centres of excellence in October. TCS launched its NVIDIA business unit to accelerate AI adoption for customers across industries, while Infosys launched industry-specific small language models built on NVIDIA’s AI Stack. Accenture led the M&A activity during the month, according to the note.
Robotics startup CynLr raises $10 million in Series A funding
CynLr, an advanced robotics startup in Bengaluru, has raised $10 million in Series A funding led by Pavestone and Athera Venture Partners. The money will help the company, which recently opened an R&D centre in Switzerland, expand further overseas. CynLr already counts companies such as Denso and General Motors among its customers.
Existing investors Speciale Invest, Infoedge (Redstart) and others also participated in this round which brings CynLr’s total funding to $15.2 Million, the company said in a press release on November 5.
India’s nascent deep-tech ecosystem is attracting more global venture capital interest as the capabilities of entrepreneurs here find more recognition in areas ranging from drug discovery to space technologies.
CynLr expects to double its team to 120 employees. The company’s flagship combination of a semi-humanoid robotic arm, named CyRo, powered by an AI and machine learning tech stack called Vision, has seen “resounding response” with strong “technology-market fit”, the company said in a press release.
Marut Dronetech raises $6.2 million in Series A funding
Marut Dronetech has secured $6.2 million in Series A funding from Lok Capital to enhance its drone technology ecosystem, focusing on agricultural innovation, the company said in a press release on November 5. The money will be used to develop advanced agricultural drones, expand service hubs and channel networks in Tier 2-3 cities, and launch 17 new drone training centres.
The company aims to build rural entrepreneurship and boost economic activity in underserved regions. Marut has a team of 250 employees. It operates over 750 drones and engages some 1,000 pilots spread over 14 Indian states currently. It is also exploring disaster management and surveillance applications.
Co-founder and CEO Prem Kumar Vislawath said in the release: “The fresh capital will also allow us to make investments in building our team, increasing manufacturing capacity to 3,000 drones per annum, and marketing to continue scaling to reach a revenue target of Rs 1,000 crore in the next five years.”