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Apple iPhone 16 series pre-order starts at 5:30 pm: Check offers and more

Apple iPhone 16 series pre-order starts at 5:30 pm: Check offers and more

by | Sep 13, 2024 | Technology


iPhone 16 Pro Max and iPhone 16 Plus

2 min read Last Updated : Sep 13 2024 | 10:13 AM IST


Pre-orders for Apple’s artificial intelligence (AI)-ready iPhone 16 series will begin at 5:30 pm on September 13, with availability set for September 20. On Apple’s digital and retail platforms, the smartphones will be offered with instant cashback and no-interest equated monthly instalment options from select banks. Additionally, Apple is offering trade-in benefits for older-generation models in exchange for the new iPhone 16 series.


iPhone 16 Series: Pre-order offers


Customers can avail an instant cashback of Rs 5,000 from select banks, including American Express, Axis Bank, and ICICI Bank. Apple is offering no-interest equated monthly instalment (no-cost EMI) plans of three and six months.

 


For exchanging an older iPhone model, Apple said customers can get up to Rs 67,500 that can be adjusted towards a new device.


Additionally, Apple is offering a three-month subscription to Apple Music, Apple TV+, and Apple Arcade at no extra cost with new iPhones.


iPhone 16: India pricing


  • 128GB storage: Rs 79,900


  • 256GB storage: Rs 89,900


  • 512GB storage: Rs 109,900


iPhone 16 Plus: Price


  • 128GB storage: Rs 89,900


  • 256GB storage: Rs 99,900


  • 512GB storage: Rs 119,900


iPhone 16 Pro: Price


  • 128GB storage: Rs 119,900


  • 256GB storage: Rs 129,900


  • 512GB storage: Rs 149,900


  • 1TB storage: Rs 169,900


iPhone 16 Pro Max: Price


  • 256GB storage: Rs 144,900


  • 512GB storage: Rs 164,900


  • 1TB storage: Rs 184,900


Offers on older-generation models


Apple has discontinued last year’s iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max models while reducing the prices of the iPhone 15 and iPhone 14 models by Rs 10,000. The company is offering instant cashback of Rs 4,000 on the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus, and Rs 3,000 on the iPhone 14 and iPhone 14 Plus. A cashback of Rs 2,500 is also available on the iPhone SE model. These offers are valid on American Express, Axis Bank, and ICICI Bank cards.


No-cost EMI plans for up to six months are also available for older-generation iPhone models.

First Published: Sep 13 2024 | 10:12 AM IST



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Microsoft names former GE CFO Dybeck as operations chief amid AI push

Microsoft names former GE CFO Dybeck as operations chief amid AI push

by | Sep 12, 2024 | Technology


2 min read Last Updated : Sep 12 2024 | 11:46 PM IST


Microsoft on Thursday named former GE finance chief Carolina Dybeck Happe as its chief operations officer, as the tech giant looks to bolster its leadership team while it doubles down on artificial intelligence.

 


Dybeck Happe, GE’s finance chief between March 2020 and September 2023, was instrumental in leading the company’s turnaround. She also helped complete the spin-off of energy infrastructure unit GE Vernova in April 2024, after she had stepped down from CFO’s role.

 


She has previously held finance head roles at multiple companies, including at A.P. Moeller – Maersk and Swedish access control and security firm Assa Abloy.

 

 


The appointment comes at a time when Microsoft is aggressively pursuing the lead in the cloud services market and trying to close the gap with Amazon’s Amazon Web Services.

 


“In this newly created role, she will join the senior leadership team (SLT), reporting to me,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said, adding Dybeck Happe will be crucial in accelerating “company-wide AI transformation”.

 


The SLT has been key to Microsoft’s strategic decisions, including the multi-billion dollar investment in ChatGPT owner OpenAI, partnerships with other tech giants and even the acquisition of videogame maker Activision Blizzard.

 


“The timing of Dybeck Happe’s appointment may coincide with the implementation of lessons learned from the recent Crowdstrike outage that specifically impacted Microsoft devices.

 


Microsoft can not allow this type of event to occur again,” said D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria.

 


Earlier this year, Microsoft tapped AI industry veteran Mustafa Suleyman to lead its AI operations and added him to the SLT. Suleyman co-founded DeepMind, which Google acquired in 2014 and now operates as its AI division.

 

To give investors a clearer picture on AI contributions to its financials, Microsoft last month restructured how it reports results for its business units, moving some search and news advertising revenue under the Azure cloud-computing unit.


(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

First Published: Sep 12 2024 | 11:46 PM IST



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Live from SF: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg tapes podcast with 6,000 friends

Live from SF: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg tapes podcast with 6,000 friends

by | Sep 12, 2024 | Technology


3 min read Last Updated : Sep 12 2024 | 11:45 PM IST

By MIKE ISAAC

More than 6,000 techies streamed on Tuesday evening into San Francisco (SF)’s Chase Center, a cavernous event space that is home to the Golden State Warriors and hosts pop stars like Olivia Rodrigo.

 


Engineers, venture capitalists, and other Silicon Valley digerati chatted as they found their seats, with Modelos and slices of pizza in hand. The anticipation was high.

 


They were not there to join a rager of a concert. Instead, they had paid $50 or more a ticket to see Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, tape a podcast about artificial intelligence, the metaverse and how he outmanoeuvred the rest of

 


Silicon Valley to keep his company winning. “You underestimate how painful things are going to be, so you can go and do good things,” Zuckerberg told the crowd about the 20-year history of building his empire, which includes Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. He mentioned Aeschylus, the ancient Greek dramatist who is often described as the father of tragedy, in


a nod to the lengthy time horizons he thinks in for his company. The audience, a sea of Patagonia sweater vests and technooptimism, roared in approval.

 

Other scions of capitalism piped up, too. Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, appeared on the jumbotron. Daniel Ek, the founder of Spotify, flew in from Sweden for the chat. Even Jensen Huang, the very busy chief executive of Nvidia, made a cameo.

It was the hottest ticket in San Francisco as Zuckerberg spoke for nearly an hour and a half with Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal, the creators of the podcast ‘Acquired.’ The hit show, which has become a must-listen for business people the world over, has an audience of more than 800,000 and has taped episodes with the top executives of Uber, Sequoia Capital, Berkshire Hathaway and others.

 

But Zuckerberg, 40, was the biggest get yet. “This is a celebration of technology,” Rosenthal declared onstage.

If it sounds strange that a podcast managed to land some of the world’s highest-profile business leaders, you may not have been paying attention.

In recent years, billionaires and top executives in Silicon Valley, Wall Street and beyond have started

to opt out of sitting only for traditional media interviews.

Instead, they increasingly prefer to tell their own stories in the friendly spaces of podcasts and YouTube streams, where they often have more leeway to expound — usually at great length — on their pursuits and passions. Many of the interviews are like fireside chats over beers with the boys. 


And the “Acquired” event showed how these formats have amassed significant gathering power, as podcasters like Rosenthal


and Gilbert have risen to fame from relative obscurity.

 


©2024 The New York Times News Service

First Published: Sep 12 2024 | 11:45 PM IST



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Top EU privacy regulator opens investigation into Google's AI compliance

Top EU privacy regulator opens investigation into Google's AI compliance

by | Sep 12, 2024 | Technology


2 min read Last Updated : Sep 12 2024 | 11:45 PM IST


Google’s lead EU privacy regulator opened an inquiry on Thursday into whether the search engine adequately protected European Union users’ personal data before using it to help develop its foundational AI Model.

 


Ireland’s Data Protection Commission (DPC), the lead EU regulator for most of the top U.S. internet firms due to the location of their EU operations in Ireland, said the probe concerned the Alphabet Inc unit’s Pathways Language Model 2 (PaLM 2).

 


“This statutory inquiry forms part of the wider efforts of the DPC, working in conjunction with its EU/EEA (European Economic Area) peer regulators, in regulating the processing of the personal data of EU/EEA data subjects in the development of AI models and systems,” the DPC said in a statement.

 

 


Social media platform X agreed last week not to train its AI systems using the personal data collected from European Union users before they had the option to withdraw their consent following court action taken by the Irish regulator.

 


A spokesperson for Google said it takes its obligations under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) seriously and will work constructively with the DPC to answer their questions.

 


Earlier this week the Luxembourg-based Court of Justice of the European Union threw out Google’s appeal against a 2.42 billion euro fine levied seven years for various anti-competitive practices.

First Published: Sep 12 2024 | 11:45 PM IST



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OpenAI presents new series of AI models with 'reasoning' abilities

OpenAI presents new series of AI models with 'reasoning' abilities

by | Sep 12, 2024 | Technology


The o1 will be available in ChatGPT and its API starting Thursday. | Photo: Bloomberg

1 min read Last Updated : Sep 12 2024 | 11:44 PM IST


Microsoft-backed OpenAI said on Thursday it was launching a series of AI models designed to spend more time processing to solve hard problems.

 


The models, dubbed o1 and o1-mini, can reason through complex tasks and solve harder problems than previous models in science, coding and math, the AI firm said.

 


The o1 will be available in ChatGPT and its API starting Thursday.

 


“We trained these models to spend more time thinking through problems before they respond, much like a person would.

 

Through training, they learn to refine their thinking process, try different strategies, and recognize their mistakes,” OpenAI said.


(Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

 

First Published: Sep 12 2024 | 11:44 PM IST



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OpenAI fundraising set to catapult startup's valuation to 0 billion

OpenAI fundraising set to catapult startup's valuation to $150 billion

by | Sep 12, 2024 | Technology


3 min read Last Updated : Sep 12 2024 | 11:31 PM IST


By Rachel Metz, Ed Ludlow, Gillian Tan and Mark Bergen




OpenAI is in talks to raise $6.5 billion from investors at a valuation of $150 billion, according to people familiar with the situation. 

 


The new valuation, a figure that doesn’t include the money being raised, is significantly higher than the $86 billion valuation from the company’s tender offer earlier this year, and cements its place as one of the most valuable startups in the world. 


At the same time, OpenAI is also in talks to raise $5 billion in debt from banks in the form of a revolving credit facility, said one of the people, all of whom asked not to be identified discussing private information. 

 

 


The startup declined to comment. The people familiar with the deal noted that the discussions are still ongoing and the terms could change. 

 


The funding round is slated to be led by Thrive Capital, Bloomberg previously reported. Thrive declined to comment on the latest valuation. Microsoft Corp., the company’s largest investor, is also set to participate, and Apple Inc. and Nvidia Corp., have been in talks about investing. 

 


OpenAI is not the first major tech startup to turn to Wall Street banks for a revolving credit facility. A slew of technology companies, including Facebook — now Meta Platforms Inc. — Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., Uber Technologies Inc. and DoorDash Inc. have tapped Wall Street for credit lines before pursuing an initial public offering, often in part to strengthen banking relationships. Historically, companies tend to reward banks that make big credit commitments with roles on their IPOs. In return, lenders sometimes offer better terms on the financing.

 


Founded in 2015, OpenAI has been at the center of the technology industry’s rapid shift toward AI, kicking off an investing frenzy with the 2022 debut of its easy-to-use chatbot, ChatGPT. The company’s products, which can generate realistic images and human-sounding text from just a few words of prompting, have captured the attention of both consumers and investors.


OpenAI has evolved significantly as a company since its founding. Late last year, it briefly ousted its Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman. Today, only a handful of the original founding team remains, and the company has taken steps to overhaul its board of directors and add to its executive ranks. 

 


In a memo to employees last month, OpenAI Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar said the financing will support the need for computing power and other operating expenses, Bloomberg reported. She also said in the memo that the startup is aiming to allow employees to sell some of their shares in a tender offer later this year. 

 


–With assistance from Katie Roof.

 


(Adds context on financing starting in the sixth paragraph.)

 


©2024 Bloomberg L.P.

First Published: Sep 12 2024 | 11:31 PM IST



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