Byju's fire sale; Meesho's pre-IPO move

Time of India

a day ago

Byju's fire sale; Meesho's pre-IPO move
Also in the letter:
Byju's sells American assets Epic, Tynker for a song
Fire sale:
Epic, Byju's second-largest acquisition with a $500-million price tag in 2022, has been sold to China's TAL Education Group for $95 million.
CodeHS, a computer science education company, has bought Tynker for $2.2 million in cash. Byju's had acquired it in 2021 in a cash-and-stock deal worth $200 million.
Leading to the sale:
In June 2024, a group of lenders from the consortium that loaned $1.2 billion to Byju's filed a petition in a US court seeking bankruptcy proceedings against its subsidiaries Epic, Tynker and Osmo, ET had reported.
The court approved the sale of Epic and Tynker in an order dated May 20.
Lots of litigations:
Meesho converts to public entity in run-up to IPO
Future proofing:
Homecoming:
Meesho has also applied to the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) to shift its domicile from the US back to India.
Last month, the SoftBank-backed etailer got board approval to rename its Indian entity, Fashnear Technologies Pvt Ltd, to Meesho Pvt Ltd.
Following the 'reverse flip', Meesho Ltd will become the parent company of the online marketplace.
Operational metrics:
Meesho recorded 34% year-on-year growth in orders, reaching 1.3 billion in nine months to December 2024.
As of December 2024, the platform had 187 million unique annual transacting users, representing a 26% increase from the previous year.
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Meta's Mark Zuckerberg is hiring for new AI team: Report
Driving the news:
Zuckerberg plans to personally hire 50 people, including a new head of AI research. The move, the report added, follows internal dissatisfaction with the reception of Meta's Llama 4 model.
Meta's proposed $10 billion investment in Scale AI could also see the AI startup's founder, Alexandr Wang, joining Meta's AGI team once the deal is finalised.
Tell me more:
Meta has delayed the release of its flagship "Behemoth" AI model, reportedly due to concerns about its capabilities, according to The Wall Street Journal.
OpenAI, Meta's closest rival in the AGI race, is also actively seeking fresh investment to accelerate its own efforts.
Also Read:
OpenAI's annualised revenue hits $10 billion, up from $5.5 billion in December 2024
What does this mean?
The company is on track to meet its 2025 revenue target of $12.7 billion, as outlined to investors.
OpenAI lost nearly $5 billion last year, but its current revenue run rate highlights just how far ahead it is of its competitors.
Turf war in the clouds showers on the ground
Babyscalers vs hyperscalers:
Neocloud firms, often called babyscalers, are boutique operators focused on flexible GPU rentals and specialised infrastructure.
Hyperscalers, in contrast, offer vast computing, storage and networking capacity at scale.
The underdogs are winning on price. Renting an Nvidia DGX H100 GPU system from a hyperscaler costs around $98 an hour. A babyscaler charges just $34, roughly two-thirds cheaper.
Investors' darlings:
Everything Apple announced at its annual developer conference
New features:
At WWDC, Apple launched iOS 26 and integrated Apple Intelligence across its apps and devices.
The company also introduced a new display technology, 'liquid glass'.
The Phone app now offers smart screening, automatic hold, and optional call answering.
Messages is getting a refresh too, with features like custom chat backgrounds.
Apple is also introducing generative AI to Xcode, its developer tool, to assist with writing, testing, and debugging code. Support for third-party models, such as ChatGPT, is forthcoming.
Updates availability:
Troubled edtech startup Byju's is selling its US assets at steep losses, mandated by a US bankruptcy court. This and more in today's ETtech Top 5.■ Meta's AGI scramble■ Enter the Babyscalers■ Coming soon: iOS 26Embattled edtech firm Byju's is being forced to offload American assets , Epic and Tynker, at steep losses following an order from a US bankruptcy court. US lawsuit filed on April 10 against Byju's eponymous founder, Byju Raveendran, his wife Divya Gokulnath, and former company executive Anita Kishore, alleged they misappropriated $533 million from the funds lent to the group's special purpose financing vehicle, Byju's Alpha. In October last year , a Delaware Bankruptcy Court found that suspended director Riju Raveendran had violated his fiduciary responsibilities as a director of Byju's Alpha.Meesho's board has approved converting the company from a private limited entity to a public limited one. The move is a key step for the ecommerce firm's plans to list in India.While the Meesho board has not cleared an IPO yet, the company said in a filing with the Registrar of Companies (RoC) that it 'intends to maintain readiness from a regulatory and compliance perspective to enable such an offering when deemed appropriate.'ETtech Top 5 and Morning Dispatch are must-reads for India's tech and business leaders, including startup founders, investors, policy makers, industry insiders and employees.Interested? Reach out to us at [e-mail] to explore sponsorship opportunities.Mark Zuckerberg, CEO, MetaMeta chief Mark Zuckerberg is assembling a team to develop artificial general intelligence (AGI), an AI system designed to match or surpass human capabilities, Bloomberg reported.OpenAI said on Monday that its annualised revenue reached $10 billion as of June , doubling from December 2024, driven by soaring enterprise and developer AI adoption.'Babyscalers' like Coreweave, Lambda Labs, Crusoe, and Nebius are taking on hyperscalers such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure, offering more competitive pricing and specialised infrastructure.As neocloud firms chip away at the dominants of the giants, Indian data centres are positioning themselves to capitalise on the shift in global cloud demand.The lower cost of power and space has made babyscalers a magnet for private equity. Blackstone, Carlyle, and BlackRock have collectively invested $11 billion into this emerging cohort.Wall Street banks have built a growing debt market around these forms. Babyscalers tap these funds to bulk-buy Nvidia chips, then lease them out by the hour or month to AI companies and developers.Apple unveiled a wave of major software updates on Monday at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), introducing revamped visuals, a new naming convention, and powerful tools under its Apple Intelligence suite. iOS 26 will be available as a free update for iPhone 11 and newer models, including the 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16 series.