One quick thing: MobiKwik slips into losses in Q2 

In today’s newsletter:

• Satya Nadella unveils Microsoft’s $3B India AI bet
• 1-4% hike for HCLTech's juniors, wait continues for seniors
• Nvidia's Jensen Huang goes all in on supercomputers, autonomous vehicles 

Was this newsletter forwarded to you? You can sign up for Tech3 here

As the AI battle intensifies among US tech giants, India is emerging as a key growth market to drive their expansion plans. 

• India-born Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wants to play a pivotal role in shaping the AI transformation of the world's most populous country

The Microsoft chief announced a $3 billion investment in cloud and AI infrastructure and skilling over the next two years in India. 

• The investment includes setting up new datacentres in the country

Nadella also increased the software giant's commitment to AI skilling in India, with plans to train 10 million people in AI skills over the next five years.

• The firm said it has already trained 2.4 million individuals in AI skills in under a year, surpassing its target of 2 million set last year

Microsoft has signed an AI MoU with SaasBoomi with a 5-year goal to:

• Upskill more than 150,000 startup employees through focused workshops
  
  
• Help attract an additional $1.5 billion in venture capital funding for the Indian AI and SaaS ecosystem
  
  
• Create over 200,000 new job opportunities over the next five years.

The AI Innovation Network, a new initiative by Microsoft Research Lab, aims to collaborate with digitally native companies like Physics Wallah to accelerate the transition from research to practical, usable business solutions.

Go deeper

After delaying the wage hike cycle to Q3, India's third-largest IT company, HCLTech, has now offered significantly lower increments than initially announced.

Far from HCLTech management's promise of 7% average annual wage hikes and 12-15% increments for top performers:

• Most employees received only 1-2% hikes, while top performers got about 3-4%

• These increases were primarily limited to junior-level staff with up to 10 years of experience

Sources told us that mid to management level employees with more than 10 years haven’t received any salary increments in the past two fiscals.

While the company didn’t directly respond to our queries, they reiterated their stance of offering 7-15% hikes, as earlier mentioned during the Q2 press meet.

• HCLTech is not alone in this. Infosys has also deferred its pay hike cycle to Q4
  
  
• Earlier, LTIMindtree and L&T Tech Services also pushed their compensation review cycles to Q3

Go deeper

Las Vegas is buzzing with excitement as CES 2025 kicks off, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang stole the show with a string of AI-powered announcements.

Nvidia’s Project Digits marks a milestone as the company unveils its first-ever desktop computer, designed specifically for AI researchers, data scientists, and students. 

• Priced at $3,000, this system is built around the new GB10 Grace Blackwell Superchip, capable of handling AI models with up to 200 billion parameters

Nvidia also took the wraps off its Cosmos AI models, designed to generate photo-realistic videos for training autonomous vehicles and robots. 

• By simulating real-world environments, Cosmos reduces the need for expensive, real-world data collection
  
  
• Nvidia is releasing Cosmos under an open license

Nvidia also unveiled new Nemotron models. These models will help develop intelligent agents for applications like customer support, fraud detection, and supply chain optimisation.

Nvidia unleashed its next-gen RTX 50 series GPUs, built on the powerful Blackwell architecture. 

• The lineup includes the RTX 5070, RTX 5070 Ti, RTX 5080, and the flagship RTX 5090

In another exciting development, Nvidia expanded its robotics ambitions, offering a glimpse into GR00T, an AI-driven initiative for teaching robots using the Apple Vision Pro. 

• With the Blueprint modality, individuals can use the Apple Vision Pro to demonstrate actions, which are then used to train robots on specific tasks

While Nvidia stole the spotlight, other tech giants also made waves at CES 2025:

• Dell Technologies unveiled a new range of AI-enabled computing devices, including laptops, workstations, and desktops

• AMD introduced several new processors, including the Ryzen AI Max, Ryzen AI 300, and Ryzen AI 200 CPUs, all tailored for next-generation AI-powered PCs

Here are some innovative products showcased at CES 2025

It was raining medals in the Paris Paralympics for India and while all the credit goes to the athletes, their coaches and families, India Inc too stood by the para athletes in their success. 

• Deepthi Bopaiah of GoSports, a non-profit organisation, told us that sports getting no mention in CSR budgets to now accounting for 1-1.5% of the overall CSR funds, has made a big change 

Many firms are allocating 5-10% of their CSR funds to sports and a lot of entrepreneurs are testing waters by backing athletes in their individual capacity. 

• GoSports is looking to double its corporate partners as well as the Olympic athletes by the Los Angeles 2028 Games 

Dig deeper

• Venture capitalists put $97 billion into AI startups in the US last year — a new record in a year of multibillion-dollar megarounds for companies like Elon Musk’s xAI, OpenAI and Anthropic.
  
  
• Apple said it would release an update to better indicate that its notification summaries are generated by artificial intelligence.

ISRO's space garden is blooming!

• ISRO announced that these cosmically cool crops have sprouted their first leaves aboard the PSLV-C60 POEM-4 module

Can space-grown veggies be the future of interplanetary dining?

Want to know more? Find out more

Note: By subscribing to Tech3 you have already made the right choice. Top it up with a premium offering, the Moneycontrol Pro Panorama, newsletter that gives you a sharp take on macros, markets, business and finance. Sign up for Pro from this link to get this newsletter in your inbox and also a host of content enjoyed by over a million subscribers.