Author: Staff Writer

As the story goes, Google suspended engineer Blake Lemoine because he claimed that one of Google’s AI, LaMDA, is “sentient”. LaMDA, which stands for “Language Model for Dialog Applications,” is one of several large-scale AI systems that has been trained on large swaths of text from the internet and can…

Telegram is launching a premium service later this month. According to Pavel Durov, Telegram founder in a post on his telegram channel, the messaging company’s premium service will be “a subscription plan that allows anyone to acquire additional features, speed and resources. It will also allow users to support Telegram…

Tech giant Apple announced that it would launch its Buy Now Pay later (BNPL) service – Apple Pay Later – along with its new operating system, iOS 16 later this year. The announcement was made at its annual developers’ conference (WWDC) event early this week. Apple Pay Later, to be…

Access Bank Holdings announced that it has entered an agreement with Centum Investment Company Plc (‘Centum’) to acquire its 83.4% stake in Sidian Bank Limited. This will be Access Bank’s second acquisition in Kenya in recent times. The Pan-African bank acquired Transnational Bank in 2020. According to Sunday Ekwochi, Company…

MFS Africa, an Africa-focused digital payments company, announced that it has acquired US-based Global Technology Partners (GTP) for $34 million in a combination of cash and shares. The Dare Okoudjou – led company said that the acquisition will enable MFS Africa further deepen its offering to Africa’s gig economy, the…

Guaranty Trust Holding (GTCO) Plc fintech subsidiary, HabariPay, has just launched Squad, a digital payments platform to provide customers with the tools to do business digitally. According to the company, “At Squad, we provide business owners with the tools they need to thrive in a digital economy while also promoting…

Kenyan telecoms giant, Safaricom partnered with Visa to launch the first M-PESA GlobalPay Visa Virtual card. With the M-PESA GlobalPay Visa Virtual card, M-PESA customers can shop online globally and make payments at merchant locations in over 200 countries through Visa’s network globally. The M-PESA GlobalPay Visa Virtual Card will…

Billionaire founder and CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk declared that he no longer tolerates remote work at Tesla. In an email to the company’s executive staff with the headline “Remote work is no longer acceptable,” , he said employees must spend a minimum of 40 hours per week in the…

Meta COO, Sheryl Sandberg announced in a Facebook post that she is leaving Meta as COO after 14 years. She joined Meta, then known as Facebook in 2008 from Google where she was Vice President, Online Sales & Operations. She didn’t give a reason for leaving the company but according…

Talk360, a South African startup announced that it has closed a $4 million seed funding round led by HAVAIC, a venture capital and advisory firm based in Cape Town, South Africa. Other investors include Gaston Aussems (ex-Mollie), Robert Kraal (ex-Adyen), Gabriel de Montessuss (President WorldPay International) and Marnix van der…

Lifecheq, a personal financial advisory startup based in South Africa, has raised $3.3 million in a Series A funding round led by Naspers through its early-stage tech investment vehicle Naspers Foundry. Naspers invested $2.5 million. Founded by Abubakari Malik Addae, Shen Tian, Lifecheq is a fintech platform empowering financial advisers to…

West Chester-based technology consulting company, IT Edge, has launched an initiative that reduces the cost of expert marketing services by about 25%, according to Vista Today. The Kickstart Initiative provides a three-month no-cost retainer plan designed for startup companies to test the current elements of digital marketing. Marketing Division Lead at…

Ayoken, an NFT marketplace for creatives, announced that it has raised $1.4 million pre-seed funding from a number of investors including Founders Factory Africa, Texas-based Kon Ventures, Europe-based venture capital collective Crypto League, Ghana-based R9C Ventures and Maximus Ventures. According to the company, the platform will enable users grow their…

Nigerian B2B ecommerce startup, Betastore, announced that it has raised $2.5 million to expand to 3 new countries – Ghana, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Cameroon – before the end of this year. The pre-series funding round has 500 Global, VestedWorld, and Loyal VC as key investors. To date,…

Jabu, a Namibian B2B e-commerce startup, announced that it raised $15m in a Series A funding round led by Tiger Global. Other investors in this round include Box Group, Knollwood, D Global Ventures, Afore Capital, Oldslip and FJ Labs. This is the second time for some of the investors like…

Twitter founder Jack Dorsey is stepping down from the Board of Directors today. He stepped down from the CEO position in November 2021, relinquishing the position to the chief technology officer (CTO) Parag Agrawal. It was also stated during the announcement last year that Dorsey would remain on the board until…

Egyptian healthtech startup, Esaal, announced that it has raised $1.7 million seed investment from A15 to expand across Middle East and North Africa. It says it intends to use the funds to scale across MENA, invest in product and brand development and hire more talent. Founded in 2018, Esaal is…

Global tech company, Uber, announced that it has facilitated 1 billion trips in Africa since it started operations on the continent 10 years ago. It launched in Johannesburg in 2013. Over 10 billion kilometres of trips have been completed and during the same period Uber and Uber Eats have collectively…

Samsung says that Galaxy Watch4 users will now be able to download Google Assistant on their devices effective today. This has been made possible partnership between Samsung Electronics and Google in building a unified Wear OS platform that creates a seamless connection across Android devices. This platform also comes with Google…

Ever since non-fungible tokens became a thing in 2014, a lot of information and misinformation has been seen. The recent hype around the DeFi feature means there is an amplified opportunity for the problems facing the technology, and with ethereum price prediction 2025 being one of the most talked-about topics…