Latest news with #Whale
India Today
5 days ago
- Science
- India Today
Nature's Timekeepers: Animals That Outlive Humans
Nature's Timekeepers: Animals That Outlive Humans BY: Kashmik Singh Chouhan The Greenland shark holds the title for the world's longest-living vertebrate. Swimming in the cold waters of the Arctic, this ancient creature can live over 400 years, with some individuals born before the 1600s still alive today! Greenland Shark – The Deep-Sea Elder Also known as Arctica islandica, the ocean quahog clam has been recorded to live for over 500 years. One specimen, nicknamed "Ming," was estimated to be born in 1499—older than the Mughal Empire! Ocean Quahog Clam – The 500-Year Bivalve These massive whales native to Arctic waters can live for over 200 years. With a thick blubber coat and a slow metabolism, bowhead whales defy age, surviving through generations of oceanic history. Bowhead Whale – Arctic Giant with a Long Life Galápagos tortoises are famous for their longevity, often living well past 100 years. Some have even crossed the 170-year mark. Their calm pace and island lifestyle likely contribute to their impressive lifespan. Galápagos Tortoise – The Slow-Moving Centenarian Living in the Pacific waters, red sea urchins may not look impressive—but they can live over 200 years! Despite their simple appearance, their bodies resist aging remarkably well. Red Sea Urchin – A Spiny Survivor While most koi live 25-40 years, there are rare stories of koi like 'Hanako,' who reportedly lived to be 226 years old in Japan. With proper care, they're more than just decorative—they're legends. Koi Fish – Pond Royalty with Centuries to Spare
The Print
28-05-2025
- Business
- The Print
Whale Secures $60 Million to Expand its Enterprise AI Suite Globally
Singapore, May 20: Whale , a Singapore-based enterprise Artificial Intelligence company, has announced the successful completion of two consecutive funding rounds–Series C1 and Series C2–raising a total of over USD 60 million. In its May 2025 Series C2 round, Whale brought in new strategic investors, including BOSCH Ventures, MTR Lab, Singtel Innov8, MDI Ventures, and Gentree Fund. This follows the Series C1 round completed in 2023 which had participation from existing investor Temasek and Linear Capital. Products AI to See, Hear, Express, and Think Whale builds AI-native enterprise product solutions designed to help businesses automate operations, accelerate decision-making, and gain deeper customer insight. Its platform integrates advanced AI, IoT, and data infrastructure technologies–offering a secure and scalable foundation for intelligent business transformation. * SpaceSight – An AI-powered video analytics and audit platform for commercial spaces, enabling businesses to see and understand customer traffic, in-store behavior, and operational performance. To date, SpaceSight has been deployed across over 300,000 stores, helping brands monitor millions of video streams daily and execute more than 200 million audit tasks annually. * Echo – An enterprise voice intelligence platform that helps businesses hear and analyze conversations with advanced speech recognition, semantic analysis, and sentiment detection. Echo has processed over 40 million minutes of voice data per day, helping enterprises across customer service monitor in-store interactions, and enhance training quality. * Harbor – A content management cloud for marketing and sales teams to express at scale, featuring AI-generated content, structured asset organization, and automated cross-channel delivery. Harbor-powered content received 800 million daily views in average, driving engagement across digital signage, social media, and localized marketing channels. * Alivia – A suite of enterprise-level AI agents that think, built for knowledge management, intelligent search, and task orchestration–powered by large language models (LLMs) and vision-language models (VLMs). Processing over 7 million AI requests daily, Alivia empowers teams to build custom agents for audits, content review, compliance, and support — turning millions of unstructured data points into action. With over 60 fine-tuned private AI models built specifically for enterprise use, Whale continues to invest heavily in generative AI, IoT infrastructure, and data operations. Overview Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Singapore, Whale supports over 600 enterprise customers across more than 20 countries. Its AI solutions power a diverse range of industries, including fashion, luxury, food and beverage, consumer electronics, retail, healthcare, and automotive. (ADVERTORIAL DISCLAIMER: The above press release has been provided by PRNewswire. ANI will not be responsible in any way for the content of the same) This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed. ThePrint holds no responsibility for its content.
CNBC
28-05-2025
- Business
- CNBC
CNBC's The China Connection newsletter: What chip shortage? 10 questions with Temasek-backed AI startup unfazed by U.S.-China tensions
Hearing about artificial intelligence from Chinese businesses paints a very different picture of how the tech can be applied than is commonly understood. After a stint as a data scientist at Meta, Caltech alumnus Jerry Ye returned to China in 2017 at the behest of an investor, with the goal of starting a global AI company. The startup, Whale, sells AI software tools and related hardware to help retailers. It now claims clients such as Starbucks, Xiaomi and Unilever. Last week, Whale announced that it had raised $60 million in a Series C funding round that included Bosch Ventures, Singtel and MDI Ventures. The startup counts Hangzhou as its China headquarters and Singapore as its global base. I caught up with Ye in Beijing this week as he passed through the city, where he has a small team. This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity. What's the impact of the U.S.-China trade war? We still think there's a global opportunity even if there are U.S.-China tensions. Business is business. Our customers are global: Procter & Gamble, Watsons, Starbucks. Who will win the AI race? The largest two markets are still the U.S. and China. The application layer will take off in both, in different ways: marketing and sales in China; very, very small vertical sectors in the U.S., such as in transportation or legal. Southeast Asia is more likely to adopt scenarios from the U.S. or China markets. What's restricting AI development? Advanced semiconductors? For China, we don't see any shortage in AI computing power. All the cloud [companies] have a lot of training power. A lot of AI companies don't actually train [models] a lot anymore. Ultimately, on-device chips [often associated with edge computing, or processors built into devices like smartphones, home appliances, etc] are becoming powerful enough to run AI models and can ensure data privacy. In the long run, most of the competition will happen on the edge, instead of at data centers. Where will AI make money for businesses first? Marketing and sales, because they are very close to the money, and the return on investment is easier to calculate. If you adopt AI in marketing and sales over seven days, on the eighth day, you will see results. What does that mean for the future of content? The basic concept of marketing is communication, narrowing the gap between the customer understanding the product and the brand selling the product. We talk a lot about personalization. But traditionally, we didn't have sufficient content, sufficient power to give each person personalized content. With AI's richer understanding and algorithms to bridge the content and the customer, the decision-making is faster and easier. Generative AI definitely gives us a lot of opportunities to generate a huge amount of videos. AI also enables us to send unique slices of live-shot photos and videos to social media. This has become the way ads are increasingly produced. But if you use a lot of generative AI, they convey a lot of fake information. Most platforms are mostly anti-generative AI videos. My personal opinion is that real-life videos are still needed. It's very hard for generative AI to [convey] real emotions, real human touch. How are companies using AI today? Our company services Starbucks in China and Southeast Asia. Each time you purchase a Starbucks coffee, huge amounts of AI are used to make the customer experience better. Right now, consumers can get their coffee order within 5 minutes, 98% of the time. If one location is too busy to handle online orders on top of in-store orders, AI analysis may send those online orders to a different location nearby. How much money is Whale making? What are your costs? Over the last three years, we have grown by about 100% [a year], and for the next two to three years, we will maintain 100% annual growth. We made revenue of 230 million yuan ($31.39 million) last year, and expect 400 million yuan in revenue this year. We have around 500 enterprise customers. We spend about 1 million yuan a month in China on operating costs — outside China, it's more expensive, so the total is around 3 million yuan a month [36 million yuan a year]. Our biggest challenge is complying with local data privacy and security needs in every region. Which AI large language model is best? Different models have different capabilities. For Claude, they are really good at generating websites, PDFs. Gemini, video. It's like having PhDs in different domains. For most of our business customers, they don't want to be fixed into one model. A lot of businesses want to keep their data private. That's why they use open-source models, deployed in their own data centers. Is there potential for an AI device, such as glasses? The biggest challenge for most hardware is the battery, not the AI itself. Most of the hardware has been here for a long time. Maybe a new cellphone. The most important thing is the application. The application will take over the large margin of the AI. Cloud has 5% to 10% of the margin, then hardware. There's a huge software layer [of which AI applications] can take 90% to 95% of the margins. What do you think about former Apple designer Jony Ive's deal with OpenAI? It will be hard. There's a camera on it. It's good to have large companies trying different AI. They have more potential to try different things. Hong Kong will remain the most prominent destination for large Chinese companies to go public: Yiyi Capital Theodore Shou, CEO of Yiyi Capital, discusses the recent strong performance of the IPO market in Hong Kong and says that the valuation premium between mainland China and Hong Kong stocks would narrow if more Chinese companies list on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. EV transition has sparked 'a tsunami of demand' for rare earths, Aclara Resources CEO says Ramón Barúa Costa, CEO and director of Aclara Resources, discusses global demand for rare earths, China's dominance in critical minerals, and the strategic importance of rare earths in the energy transition. HK debutant Mirxes says China-Singapore 'dual engine' will drive growth amid global changes Lihan Zhou, CEO and Co-Founder of Mirxes, a Singapore-based biotech company, discusses the company's Hong Kong IPO and growth prospects. The U.S. and China are talking. Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu and U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau had a call last week, and both sides agreed to keep lines of communication open, according to readouts on Friday. While no specifics were announced, the call was the first since the U.S. and China agreed this month to pause most tariff increases. China's industrial profits rose in April. Official figures out Tuesday showed profits climbed 3% year on year in April at major industrial companies, faster than the 2.6% recorded in March and growing despite U.S. tariffs. But margins at electric car companies are facing more pressure after BYD this month announced a slew of discounts. Xiaomi targets Tesla and Apple at the same time. The Chinese smartphone company on Thursday revealed a new chip that it claims beats Apple's on certain metrics — and comes inside a phone far cheaper than the iPhone 16 Pro. Xiaomi also teased a new SUV called the YU7, which analysts predict will amp up the competition for Tesla in China. Chinese and Hong Kong stocks traded mixed Wednesday as investors continued to assess the U.S.-European Union trade optimism. Mainland China's CSI 300 added 0.11% while Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index — which includes major Chinese companies — slipped 0.4% as of 11 a.m. local time. The benchmark 10-year Chinese government bond yield is at 1.672%. The offshore Chinese yuan last traded at 7.1971 against the greenback. — May 31: Official Purchasing Managers Index for May June 2: Mainland China markets closed for the Dragon Boat Festival holiday June 3: Caixin China General Manufacturing PMI for May
Korea Herald
23-05-2025
- Business
- Korea Herald
Whale Secures $60 Million to Expand its Enterprise AI Suite Globally
SINGAPORE, May 20, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Whale, a Singapore-based enterprise Artificial Intelligence company, has announced the successful completion of two consecutive funding rounds— Series C1 and Series C2 —raising a total of over USD 60 million. In its May 2025 Series C2 round, Whale brought in new strategic investors, including BOSCH Ventures, MTR Lab, Singtel Innov8, MDI Ventures, and Gentree Fund. This follows the Series C1 round completed in 2023 which had participation from existing investor Temasek and Linear Capital. Products AI to See, Hear, Express, and Think Whale builds AI-native enterprise product solutions designed to help businesses automate operations, accelerate decision-making, and gain deeper customer insight. Its platform integrates advanced AI, IoT, and data infrastructure technologies—offering a secure and scalable foundation for intelligent business transformation. With over 60 fine-tuned private AI models built specifically for enterprise use, Whale continues to invest heavily in generative AI, IoT infrastructure, and data operations. Overview Founded in 2017 and headquartered in Singapore, Whale supports over 600 enterprise customers across more than 20 countries. Its AI solutions power a diverse range of industries, including fashion, luxury, food and beverage, consumer electronics, retail, healthcare, and automotive.
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Ant International Launches Tokenised Deposit Solutions for Real-Time Treasury Management with HSBC
The company's Embedded Finance unit is expanding banking partnerships on tokenisation and AI-driven global liquidity management tools to maximize payment and treasury efficiency HONG KONG, May 22, 2025--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Ant International today announced its collaboration with HSBC on the bank's new Tokenised Deposit Service in Hong Kong. The service will support treasury management with real-time, always-on HKD and USD payments between corporate wallets held by a corporate client at HSBC Hong Kong. The Tokenised Deposit Service is also the first bank-led, blockchain-based settlement service in Hong Kong. The launch comes after a successful pilot test between HSBC and Ant International on Ant's Whale platform, which has been rolling out blockchain-based payments and tokenised deposits solutions with various bank partners. Following the pilot test, HSBC adapted the learnings from the joint innovation into its Tokenised Deposit Service, with Ant International as the pioneer client. As the first client to utilise the Tokenised Deposit Service, Ant International has successfully completed an instant intra-group fund transfer via the service. It initiated the transaction via its internal global treasury management platform, the Whale platform, digitising its USD deposits with HSBC into digital tokens on the bank's secure distributed ledger. One of the core products developed by the Platform Tech team under Ant International's Embedded Finance business, the Whale platform is a next-generation treasury management solution that utilises blockchain technology, including advanced encryption and AI, to improve the efficiency and transparency of funds transfer between Ant International's intragroup entities for real-time global treasury management. In 2024, more than a third of Ant International's transactions were processed on-chain via the Whale platform. The Whale platform currently supports multiple tokenised assets from leading banks and institutions around the world, enabling interoperability across diverse blockchain networks. By leveraging leading DLT technologies such as homomorphic encryption and zero-knowledge proofs, the Whale platform encrypts transaction information and enables multi-party verification in an encrypted state, ensuring secure, confidential, and seamless cross-chain transactions. Ant International's collaboration with HSBC on tokenised deposits expands a longstanding partnership since 2020. In October 2024, Ant International and HSBC also completed a successful HKD-denominated cross-bank experiment under the Hong Kong Monetary Authority's Ensemble Sandbox. "We are very excited to work with an industry leader like HSBC, who shares the belief that tokenisation is the key to bridging the stability of traditional banking with the efficiency of blockchain, to enable real-time treasury management," said Kelvin Li, General Manager of Platform Tech at Ant International. "As a tech connector in the fast-evolving financial services industry, our banking partnerships are expanding from tokenisation to AI-driven global FX and liquidity initiatives. We look forward to working with more public and private-sector partners to unlock more transparent, accessible and efficient treasury management solutions for businesses worldwide." About Ant International With headquarters in Singapore and main operations across Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Latin America, Ant International is a leading global digital payment, digitisation and financial technology provider. Through collaboration across the private and public sectors, our unified techfin platform supports financial institutions and merchants of all sizes to achieve inclusive growth through a comprehensive range of cutting-edge digital payment and financial services solutions. To learn more, please visit View source version on Contacts Media Contacts Ant InternationalKahmun
