On April 28, 2022, Reply, a company specialized in the design and implementation of solutions based on new communication channels and digital media, inaugurated its new applied research center in Turin focused on the development of the most innovative technologies. The cutting-edge work of Area42's workshops focuses on the areas of autonomous warehouse, last mile delivery, robotics, connected products, blockchain and metaverse. Reply is a company specializing in Consulting, Systems Integration and Digital Services, including the design and implementation of solutions based on new communication channels and digital media. It partners with key industrial groups in defining and developing business models made possible by new technologies such as artificial intelligence, Big Data, cloud computing, the Internet of Things and mobile and social networks. Reply's experts work daily on these technologies, transforming ideas into innovative prototypes, exploiting their full potential and applying them to real industrial use cases.

US semiconductor giant Intel has acquired Israeli startup Habana Labs, a developer of artificial intelligence processors, for $2 billion, the company announced on Monday. Founded in 2016, Habana Labs develops processor platforms that are optimized for training deep neural networks and for inference deployment in production environments. The company is headquartered in Tel Aviv and has offices in California, Poland, and China. Intel led a $75 million investment in Habana Labs in 2018. That year, Habana unveiled its Goya inference processor which it says is ideally suited for the most demanding AI applications in the industry, including private and cloud data centers, autonomous vehicles, factory and warehouse automation robots, and high-end drones.

Major IT Tech Company, Tech Mahindra, has set up its first development center in Timisoara, Romania. The development center will leverage 5G technology for network transformation for their Europe based clients, says the announcement. Tech Mahindra has 100 members team at the development center. The team manages different core, transmission network, and Radio Access Network operations. Tech Mahindra, in the announcement, also noted that the company plans to use Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning (AI/ML) technologies to further automate ad transform network operations.

The development of the Indian software industry is an archetype of how economic liberalization combined with an entrepreneurial spirit can build an industry that today contributes as much as 8% to the GDP of a fast-growing country like India. On the back of thousands of IT services companies that were built over the last three decades, the industry has generated US$177 billion in revenue and more than US$135 billion in exports in FY 2018–2019 alone. The IT industry has also created over four million direct jobs and 12 million indirect jobs in India. A testament to this growth is the fact that the largest Indian IT services company is currently valued at over US$100 billion and generates over US$20 billion in revenue. Over the years, the Indian software industry has matured from providing cost-effective back office support to driving the digital transformation agenda ahead in global companies. Increasingly, leaders of more than a thousand global enterprises across the U.S., Europe, and other locations have realized India's potential and have set up their own IT or R&D centers to take advantage of the vibrant Indian software ecosystem. The current wave of Indian software entrepreneurs is focusing on building platforms and products for Indian and global markets. This has led to the creation of more than 7,000 tech startups in India.

TEL AVIV (Reuters) - U.S. file-sharing and storage company Dropbox plans to expand its development center in Tel Aviv by hiring more staff and looking out for acquisition opportunities in security and machine-learning. Israel's education system and military service have created a pool of talented people working in cybersecurity and "that is something we deeply need to take advantage of", Quentin Clark, who leads engineering, product and design at Dropbox, told reporters on Tuesday during a visit to Israel. Dropbox, which went public on Nasdaq in March in the biggest tech IPO in over a year, established a presence in Israel in 2015 when it bought mobile productivity startup CloudOn. Clark said it was now looking for potential acquisitions in the fields of security and machine learning. He said he would be visiting universities in Israel this week to look at machine-learning technologies.

The Nintendo Wii is the best selling video game console of all time. But the Nintendo Switch, so far at least, is on an even faster sales pace. On Thursday, Nintendo announced that the Switch had become the fastest selling home video game system of all time in the U.S., selling over 4.8 million units in 10 months. That's 800,000 more than the Wii did in the same timeframe. "Whether this is a dedicate gamer who doesn't want to stop playing Mario or Zelda, or whether it's a child experiencing these franchises for the very first time, we believe the value proposition as well as the compelling content is what's fueling our momentum," Reggie Fils-Aime, president of Nintendo of America, told Fortune.

Booking.com acquired a tiny software company called Evature, which is based in Tel Aviv and offers natural language and chatbot-related technologies for hotels, airlines, travel agencies, and airports. The companies did not disclose the terms of the deal, but only a small sum was likely involved. The company is said to have raised $5 million in funding, and the deal has all the appearances of being an acqui-hire. A Booking.com spokesperson said that the company acquired Evature "to support research-and-development efforts generally, but also specifically in the area of deep learning and artificial intelligence. All of this is a part of Booking's ongoing dedication to testing new areas of technology innovation."

HUANGCHUAN VILLAGE, CHINA – Every day after lunch, Qu Yexiu used to potter around her house in northwest China doing housework and looking after her 2-year-old grandson. Now, every day after lunch, Qu and her grandson visit the newly opened early-childhood development center in their village of Huangchuan in the mountains of Shaanxi province, where he can play with other toddlers. "Things are better now that we have this village center," said Qu, 56. She looks after her two grandchildren while their parents work and live in nearby Anhui province. The other grandchild attends a preschool.

Intel just launched a new Autonomous Driving Garage facility in San Jose, at a facility that used to house Altera, the company it acquired in 2015. The autonomous tech development facility is actually one of four garages Intel maintains globally, including one in Arizona, one in Portland and one in Berlin. The Silicon Valley location, however, makes sure its biggest partners in the emerging space are close at hand. The facility officially opened at a press event on Wednesday that included a ribbon cutting ceremony, talks by Intel subject matter experts on various aspects of its self-driving program and a number of demonstrations of different parts of its business, including a ride in partner Delphi's self-driving Audi SUV, a look at BMW's latest advanced autonomous capability testing vehicle (the first in the U.S. and among the first of the fleet of 40 it's committed to producing) and a look at the company's efforts to spearhead development of fast, secure wireless infrastructure. Intel's Garage includes a literal garage -- the spacious facility was large enough to house four vehicles with plenty of room left over for media, analysts and a strong cadre of Intel staff.

Google's self-driving cars may become a more familiary sight in the Detroit area as opens a new test center (Photo: Google) DETROIT -- Google may have hatched its self-driving cars in California's Silicon Valley, but it is returning to the traditional heart of the auto industry to develop it. John Krafcik, CEO of Google's Self-Driving Car Project, said Wednesday that the tech giant will open a 53,000-squaree-foot development center in the Detroit suburb of Novi. He made the announcement in a post on Google . Krafcik said the Novi development center will serve as a hub that Google will use to work with a number of partners in the automotive industry. Google has been working on self-driving cars for more than six years.