<div>
 <ul>
 <li>
 
 Plaid, a diversified FinTech infrastructure provider, has acquired the identity verification and compliance platform Cognito for USD 250 million. Through this, Plaid aims to improve the onboarding experience it offers&nbsp;its developers, which includes identity verification, account connection, and account funding.
 
 </li>
 </ul>
 <ul>
 <li>
 
 Plaid will bring aboard all of Cognito&rsquo;s staff (including its three co-founders, and Plaid&rsquo;s 5,500 clients will gain access to Cognito&rsquo;s technology as an optional add-on.&nbsp;
 
 </li>
 </ul>
 
 &lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;
 Analyst QuickTake: 
 The acquisition comes shortly after the company raised an 
 <a href="https://sp-edge.com/updates/4943">
 undisclosed extension to its Series D
 </a>
 funding in August 2021. Notably, this is Plaid&rsquo;s first major acquisition since its deal to be acquired by Visa fell through in January last year, after which the company raised funding in April 2021 at a valuation of USD 13.5 billion (more than twice the USD 5.3 billion proposed for the Visa acquisition).&lt;/ul&gt;
 
</div>

<div>
 
 <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2022/01/20/plaid-buys-cognito-to-bolster-its-feature-set-as-it-moves-beyond-simply-connecting-accounts/">
 Tech Crunch
 </a>
 &nbsp;
 
 
 <a href="https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/39553/plaid-buys-id-verification-firm-cognito">
 Finextra
 </a>
 &nbsp;
 
 
 <a href="https://finovate.com/plaid-acquires-cognito/">
 Finovate
 </a>
 &nbsp;
 
 
 <a href="https://www.pymnts.com/acquisitions/2022/plaid-buys-id-verifier-cognito/">
 PYMNTS
 </a>
 
 
</div>

FinTech Infrastructure

Plaid acquires Cognito for USD 250 million

Helping employers provide personalized, high-touch, and holistic financial wellness tools to their entire workforce.

Financial Wellness Tools

ANALYST_QUICK_TAKE

PROMINENT_CATEGORY

<div>
 
 DailyPay, a platform for earned-wage access (EWA), has introduced a new product feature named International Remittances. Financial technology solution ReadyRemit by Brightwell and Visa Direct power this feature. 
 This feature of International Remittances enables users to readily access and transfer their earnings to their friends and family globally. This transfer is possible through a single app and doesn't require users to wait for a scheduled payday.&nbsp;
 In collaboration with Visa, this feature will allow DailyPay to extend its money transfer service to cards and bank accounts in over 70 countries. This new feature will supplement its existing work tech platform, offering an EWA solution, the DailyPay Visa Prepaid Card, and Credit Health. 
 
</div> Analyst QuickTake: 
 The new feature offers a one-stop solution for workers to easily access wages and transfer funds across borders and follows the company's announcement last month of its <a href="https: 
//www.dailypay.com/press-center/press-releases/dailypay-announces-international-expansion-into-the-united-kingdom/"> international expansion to the UK </a> .

DailyPay expands services with new International Remittances feature

Autonomous and connected technologies shaping the future of the auto industry

Auto Tech

INCUMBENTS_PRESENT

<div>
 Toyota Motor and NTT, a Japanese telecommunications company, have announced a joint investment of JPY 500 billion (USD 3.26 billion) for Research &amp; Development of AI-powered autonomous driving software.
 Their plan is to develop a software that can anticipate accidents and control vehicles autonomously. The goal for these companies is to have a fully operational system by 2028, which they intend to offer to other automobile manufacturers.
</div> Analyst QuickTake: 
 This collaboration builds on Toyota and NTT's existing partnership in autonomous technology. Their <a href="https: 
//sp-edge.com/updates/23510"> November 2023 </a> agreement to test driverless vehicles, including plans for autonomous buses and taxis by 2025, demonstrates a consistent, long-term commitment to advancing self-driving capabilities.

Toyota partners with NTT to develop AI-powered autonomous driving software

The toolkit to build machine learning applications at scale

Machine Learning Infrastructure

<div>
 AI chip design startup Fractile has been granted GBP 5 million (~USD 6.5 million) in funding by the Advanced Research + Invention Agency (ARIA). They were funded through the Scaling Compute program.
 This financial support will aid Fractile's continual development of advanced chips and systems, necessary to achieve the next level in AI performance.
 Fractile is part of a selected 12 projects that have been awarded close to GBP 50 million (~USD 65 million) by ARIA. These grants are part of the Scaling Compute program, aimed at promoting computing advancements by reducing the cost of AI hardware.
</div> Analyst QuickTake: 
 The funding from ARIA follows Fractile's USD 15 million seed round in <a href="https: 
//sp-edge.com/updates/32031"> July 2024 </a> to expand the company's headcount and accelerate progress toward its first product. ARIA, the UK’s Advanced Research and Innovation Agency, supports high-risk, high-reward R&amp;D in technologies like AI, robotics, and neurotechnology. The agency recently launched its Safeguarded AI <a href="https: 
//www.aria.org.uk/programme-safeguarded-ai/"> program </a> , which focuses on establishing safety standards for AI systems.

Fractile raises GBP 5 million in funding from ARIA to develop AI chips

Empowering Tomorrow's Innovations with Generative AI Infrastructure

Generative AI Infrastructure

<div>
 Fractile, an AI chip design startup, has received a funding of GBP 5 million (~USD 6.5 million) from the Advanced Research + Invention Agency (ARIA) through its Scaling Compute program.
 This funding will assist with their ongoing development of chips and systems that aim to propel AI performance to the next level.
 Fractile is one of the 12 projects that have been awarded a total of almost GBP 50 million (~USD 65 million) by ARIA via its Scaling Compute program. This program aims to boost computing advancement by reducing the cost of AI hardware.
</div> Analyst QuickTake: 
 The funding from ARIA follows Fractile's USD 15 million seed round in <a href="https: 
//sp-edge.com/updates/32031"> July 2024 </a> to expand the company's headcount and accelerate progress toward its first product. ARIA, the UK’s Advanced Research and Innovation Agency, supports high-risk, high-reward R&amp;D in technologies like AI, robotics, and neurotechnology. The agency recently launched its Safeguarded AI <a href="https: 
//www.aria.org.uk/programme-safeguarded-ai/"> program </a> , which focuses on establishing safety standards for AI systems.

Clean, congestion-free air travel gets liftoff

Passenger eVTOL Aircraft

<div>
 Xpeng Motors, a Chinese electric vehicle manufacturer, is building a flying car manufacturing facility in Guangzhou's Development Zone. This facility will produce the Land Aircraft Carrier (LAC), an eVTOL car, beginning mass production in 2026 with an annual capacity of 10,000 units.
 The Guangzhou facility, covering 180,000 sq m, will comprise four production workshops for materials, joints, paint, and general assembly. The focus will be on manufacturing the flying aircraft component of the modular vehicle, whereas the three-axle carrier will be assembled at existing Xpeng EV plants.
 Xpeng has reportedly received over 3,000 intended purchase orders plus more than 1,000 reservation orders for the LAC eVTOL car. The vehicle will be based on an 800 V platform with a mixed range of 1,000 km. Its aircraft component can handle five or six flights on a full charge and supports manual and automatic driving modes.
 
</div> Analyst QuickTake: 
 In <a href="https: 
//sp-edge.com/updates/32331"> August 2024 </a> , Xpeng raised USD 150 million to develop its eVTOL car and construct this new manufacturing facility in Guangzhou. Following this, in September 2024, it announced that the LAC eVTOL car was scheduled for public manned test flights in <a href="https: 
//sp-edge.com/updates/33199"> September 2024 </a> , with expected deliveries in 2026, starting from RMB 2 million (~USD 280,000).

Xpeng begins construction of flying car assembly plant in Guangzhou

Using AI to automate, enhance and optimize marketing activities

Marketing Automation

<div>
 GumGum, an AdTech firm, has unveiled the GumGum Platform, a combination of contextual, attention, and creative solutions for digital advertising. This includes the Mindset Graph, a tool designed to align consumers' interests with advertising goals.
 The platform is made up of three primary components: GumGum Contextual, GumGum Attention, and GumGum Creative. GumGum Contextual uses AI technology to align ads with relevant content. GumGum Attention, on the other hand, tracks the engagement of viewers with ads in real-time. Lastly, GumGum Creative is responsible for delivering diverse ad formats, including video and display ads, without disrupting the user's experience.
 
</div> Analyst QuickTake: 
 GumGum is combining its various technologies to create more comprehensive solutions. In <a href="https: 
//sp-edge.com/updates/34639"> October 2024 </a> , it launched a new sports marketing solution, combining the platform and Relo Metrics.

GumGum launches advertising platform with Mindset Graph tool

Foundation Models

<div>
 The transcription tool, Whisper, from OpenAI has been found to be adding hallucinated content to audio transcriptions.
 A study from the University of Michigan discovered hallucinations in 80% of public meeting transcriptions. A machine learning engineer found issues in over 50% of 100+ hours of transcriptions. Another developer identified fabricated content in almost all of the 26,000 transcriptions he examined. These hallucinations are not simple errors but include unexpected additions of racial commentary and invented medical treatments, raising particular concerns for its use in medical scenarios.
 OpenAI has confirmed the problem, stating it is working on increasing the accuracy and reducing the hallucinations in its Whisper tool. It has also pointed out the product usage policies that prohibit the use of Whisper in high-stakes decision-making scenarios.
</div>

OpenAI's Whisper tool found adding fabricated content to transcripts

Providing a seamless consumer experience is one hope for bringing back brick and mortar retail, automated stores are being built to do just that.

Automated Stores

<div>
 Marks &amp; Spencer, a food and fashion retailer based in the UK, has unveiled plans to install self-checkout systems in the changing rooms of its fashion stores. The firm is looking to execute this deployment in over 100 stores by the beginning of 2028.
 This new system will allow customers to try on garments and transact payments in the changing room itself. This progression will eliminate the necessity for customers to join the queue two times. Staff members will be present in the changing room areas to mitigate potential theft and verify that customers have paid for their merchandise.
 This advanced technology has already been implemented across 28 revamped Marks &amp; Spencer stores, including at their Fosse Park flagship store in Leicester. The company's initial approach involves installing a single self-checkout unit in each changing room area, with plans to amplify the rollout based on customer usage and demand.
 </div>

M&S adds self-checkout systems in store changing rooms

Platforms, apps, and cards to keep the corporate wallet in check

Business Expense Management

<div>
 Ramp, a corporate spend management platform, has rolled out Ramp App Center, a new app store meant for third-party developers to create apps that can be integrated with Ramp's platform. The AppCenter is accessible to Ramp customers, though some apps are exclusive to Ramp Plus subscribers.
 The App Center started off featuring over 200 integrations from more than 75 associates that includes NetSuite, QuickBooks, Puzzle, Digits, Campfire, Ironclad, and Carta. The platform renders one-click access to diverse business tools and enhances Ramp's present API capabilities with the addition of new integration features.
 Ramp does not impose any extra costs or commissions from app developers. However, it furnishes developers with potential opportunities to earn through Ramp's ecosystem by permitting them to reach out to its extensive customer base of over 25,000. 
 
</div> Analyst QuickTake: 
 The new service launch follows its initiatives to drive AI integration and support its growth strategy following its latest funding round in <a href="https: 
//sp-edge.com/updates/28593"> April 2024 </a> . The new app center builds on the partnerships and product enhancements it has actively pursued, including its collaboration with Priceline in <a href="https: 
//sp-edge.com/updates/30197"> June 2024 </a> to launch Ramp Travel, streamlining business travel, and automating expense management.&nbsp;

Ramp launches App Center for business tools integration to streamline back-office tasks

<div>
 Sarvam AI, an Indian AI startup, has launched Sarvam-1, a significant language model designed predominantly for Indian languages. This model that accommodates around 2 billion parameters covers 10 Indian languages alongside English and can be freely downloaded on Hugging Face's model hub.
 Sarvam-1 deploys a unique tokenizer capable of handling Indic scripts effectively and attaining fertility rates ranging from 1.4 to 2.1 tokens per word. It was trained via Sarvam's 2 trillion - Sarvam-2 - over five days deploying 1,024 GPUs on Yotta's Shakti cluster using NVIDIA's NeMo framework. Interestingly, the company asserts its model's superior performance against more significant models, including Gemma-2 and Llama-3, through benchmarks like MMLU, ARC-Challenge, and IndicGenBench.
</div> Analyst QuickTake: 
 The company raised <a href="https: 
//sp-edge.com/updates/24761"> USD 41 million </a> in December last year to build tailored language models for the Indian market. This February, it partnered with <a href="https: 
//sp-edge.com/updates/26477"> Microsoft </a> to enable Sarvam AI's Indic voice-oriented LLM to be available in its cloud platform Azure.

All Updates

Plaid acquires Cognito for USD 250 million

DailyPay expands services with new International Remittances feature

Toyota partners with NTT to develop AI-powered autonomous driving software

Fractile raises GBP 5 million in funding from ARIA to develop AI chips

Fractile raises GBP 5 million in funding from ARIA to develop AI chips

Xpeng begins construction of flying car assembly plant in Guangzhou

GumGum launches advertising platform with Mindset Graph tool

OpenAI's Whisper tool found adding fabricated content to transcripts

M&S adds self-checkout systems in store changing rooms

Ramp launches App Center for business tools integration to streamline back-office tasks

Sarvam AI launches Sarvam-1, a language model for Indian languages

FinTech Infrastructure

Plaid acquires Cognito for USD 250 million

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