Kenyan Leta has raised $5 million to help businesses move goods cheaper and faster across Africa. European VC firm Speedinvest led the seed funding round, which was supported by Google’s Africa Investment Fund and Equator, an Africa-focused climate tech fund. The new funding will be used to scale its solution and to double revenue in the coming months as it expands into more countries across Africa. How Leta’s Platform Work African businesses spend up to four times the global average to transport goods, driving up prices for essentials like food and medicine. The African Development Bank (AfDB) reports that logistics costs account for a staggering 75% of total product costs in Africa. Most of these businesses also have to rely on manual logistics, leading to delays. Through its AI-powered platform
Tag Archives: AIInnovation
Mar
Athletes have long been known for their prowess in the sporting arena, but increasingly, many are diversifying their wealth by tapping into the world of technology. Investing in tech companies allows these high-profile sports figures to secure long-term financial growth and make their mark outside sports. In this article, we will examine how Serena Williams, LeBron James, Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry, and Tom Brady have leveraged their financial success to make significant investments in technology, creating a path to future wealth and influence. Serena Williams – Serena Ventures Serena Williams is not only a tennis legend, but she has also positioned herself as a key figure in the world of venture capital. In 2014, Williams launched Serena Ventures, a venture capital firm that focuses on investing in companies led by
Feb
Chinese President Xi Jinping and other senior government officials met a group of prominent Chinese tech entrepreneurs in Beijing last week. That neither the property nor finance sector was represented sent a clear signal of the government’s priority. Attendees included Jack Ma , co-founder of Alibaba Group Holding (which owns the South China Morning Post), Xiaomi founder and CEO Lei Jun , Tencent founder and CEO Pony Ma Huateng , BYD chairman and CEO Wang Chuanfu and Huawei Technologies founder and CEO Ren Zhengfei . Other business leaders included CATL chairman Robin Zeng Yuqun and DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng , as well as Wang Xingxing , founder of robotics company Unitree, and Liu Yonghao , chairman of animal feed producer New Hope. This meeting came at a significant time in
Elon Musk and Sam Altman were among the 11-person team that founded OpenAI in 2015. Photo: Frederic J. BROWN, Jung Yeon-je / AFP/FileSource: AFP The feud between Elon Musk and Sam Altman has become one of the bitterest rivalries in business history, with the Tesla tycoon bidding to buy Altman’s OpenAI in an apparent attempt to derail the ChatGPT maker’s ascent to becoming one of the world’s most important companies. What sparked the rivalry? Musk and Altman were among the 11-person team that founded OpenAI in 2015. Created as a counterweight to Google’s dominance in artificial intelligence, the project got its initial funding from Musk, who invested $45 million to get it started. Three years later, Musk departed OpenAI. The company initially cited “a potential future conflict for Elon…as Tesla
Jan
Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) start-up MiniMax has launched a new series of open-source models, intensifying the competition among mainland technology firms to deliver cost-effective AI systems that can rival top offerings from US competitors. The Shanghai-based company on Tuesday unveiled the MiniMax-01 large language model (LLM) family, which includes a general-purpose foundational model, the MiniMax-Text-01, and the multimodal MiniMax-VL-01 with visual capabilities. LLMs are the tech that powers text-generating AI products such as ChatGPT . In benchmark tests that MiniMax posted to its official WeChat account, the new foundational language model was shown to be on par with the world’s leading AI models in evaluations that included maths problem solving, domain knowledge, the ability to follow instructions, and avoiding hallucinations or factual errors. MiniMax’s release of an industry-leading AI system
Meta has introduced an open-source artificial intelligence model, Llama 3.1 405B, claiming it to be a strong competitor to products from companies like OpenAI and Anthropic. In a blog post, Meta stated that its new model is “competitive” with others, including those from OpenAI and Anthropic, across various tasks. This implies that one of the […]