Netflix, the streaming giant, is phasing out the basic ad free plan. The company has been transitioning into ad supported viewing lately, it’s success is the reason behind slashing this basic tier.

According to reports, Netflix wants subscribers of its basic ad-free plan (which used to cost  $11.99 USD) to instead become ad-viewing subscribers or pay more for the ad-free streaming service.  

Once eliminated, Netflix will go from four to three price points:

Ads – $6.99 / £4.99 / 5.99€

Standard (HD) – $15.49 / £10.99 / 13.49€

Premium (4K) – $22.99 / £17.99 / 19.99€

Netflix informed its shareholders that “in Q4‘23, like the quarter before, our ads membership increased by nearly 70% quarter over quarter, supported by improvements in our offering (e.g., downloads) and the phasing out of our Basic plan for new and rejoining members in our ads markets.”

The company also noted that “The ads plan now accounts for 40% of all Netflix sign-ups in our ads markets and we’re looking to retire our Basic plan in some of our ads countries, starting with Canada and the UK in Q2 and taking it from there.”

RagaAI, a pioneering AI-focused startup, has successfully closed a $4.7m seed funding round. The round was led by pi Ventures with participation from global investors including Anorak Ventures, TenOneTen Ventures, Arka Ventures, Mana Ventures, and Exfinity Venture Partners. 

The sprawl of large language models (LLMs), computer vision and natural language processing (NLP) have created a new generation of applications that are reshaping industries and transforming how we engage with the world today. Ensuring the performance, safety and reliability of AI has become a key focus. Helping companies stay on top of this, RagaAI has launched from stealth with an automated and comprehensive AI testing platform.

RagaAI is establishing a robust framework for safe and reliable AI. RagaAI’s breakthrough Foundation Models called RagaAI DNA for testing uses automation to detect AI issues, diagnose and fix them instantly. The platform already offers over 300 different tests to help users triage the issue down to its root cause. It is able to identify issues as varied as data drift, edge case detection, poor data labelling quality, bias in the data, lack of model robustness or adversarial attacks. RagaAI is a true multimodal platform which supports LLMs, images/videos, 3D, audio, NLP and structured data and reduces 90% of the risks while accelerating AI development by more than 3x.

RagaAI is working with a range of AI-first companies and identified two common challenges they faced which RagaAI is addressing Firstly, they face a skill set constraint owing to the sparse availability of specialized AI engineers. As such AI Testing automation becomes a necessity to optimize the AI development process. Secondly, safety and security concerns loom large. AI testing will mitigate vulnerabilities and ensure the reliability and trustworthiness of AI systems 

Gaurav Agarwal, CEO and founder of RagaAI

RagaAI was founded in January 2022 by tech veteran Gaurav Agarwal who spent the early part of his career at Texas Instruments before moving to mobility business Ola and computing giant NVIDIA. He and the founding team have over 50 years of collective AI expertise who want to unlock the potential of AI by bridging the gap between technological capabilities and business outcomes through AI testing. RagaAI advisors include AI leads at Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft and NVIDIA. 

Gaurav Agarwal, CEO and founder of RagaAI commented: “At Ola & NVIDIA, I saw the significant consequences of AI failures due to lack of comprehensive testing. Our Foundation Models “RagaAI DNA” is already solving this problem across large fortune 500 companies. RagaAI is designed to detect AI issues, diagnose them and fix them seamlessly. Our vision is to liberate AI from the constraints of human interventions, and foster continuous improvement. In the era where AI dominates, our mission at RagaAI is to tackle the paramount challenge of ensuring the quality and consistency of AI applications. Focused on providing innovative testing solutions, we aim to unlock the full potential of the AI revolution, paving the way for a future where AI thrives with trust, reliability and excellence. Guided by our core values, we are committed to pushing the boundaries of automated AI issue detection, automated root cause analysis and fixing the issues, staying at the forefront of cutting-edge methods.”

The platform has already added value to various sectors with multiple use cases. An ecommerce client implementing a chatbot fine-tuned an open-source language model on their product catalog for customer support. RagaAI was instrumental in identifying and rectifying hallucinations, reducing errors in responses. Meanwhile, for an Automotive customer facing challenges in detecting vehicles in low-light scenarios, RagaAI leveraged generative AI to simulate diverse lighting conditions, significantly enhancing model accuracy and potentially preventing accidents.

Research indicates that AI is poised to be a $2 trillion market by 2030. RagaAI believes that 25% of this spend will be targeted towards ensuring AI is safe and reliable and its proposition is well placed to service the demand in the time to come.

RagaAI’s funding round will primarily be used to advance research and development, with a focus on improving AI testing tools. Additionally, the company plans to expand its team and raise awareness in the AI community while forming strategic partnerships. This investment positions RagaAI for significant growth in AI innovation. 

Manish Singhal, Founding Partner, pi Ventures, commented: “”In the rapidly expanding AI landscape, the importance of reliable and unbiased systems is crucial, with AI testing emerging as the linchpin for ensuring the safety, reliability, and ethicality of complex models. 

Driven by their patent pending Drift detection technology, RagaAI, an AI testing platform, is well-suited to solve these massive problems for the AI deployments globally. At pi Ventures, we believe in backing founders who can create disruptive solutions for global impact. In our view, Gaurav and his stellar team at Raga are fulfilling that goal in a big way. We are pleased to be associated with them. “

RagaAI has a key focus on Enterprise and data privacy is at its core. It is the only AI & MLOPS product to have all of the SOC2 Type2, ISO 27001, HIPAA, GDPR & CCPA certifications. Additionally, RagaAI technology is deployed on customer private clouds or their on-prem infra. Designed for data scientists and ML engineers, RagaAI is offered through a fully featured UI and an easy to use python interface.

In response to recent staffing cuts at Google, reports indicate that some employees are organising public rallies at Google office locations across the United States.

An event organised for January 18th by a labour group called the Alphabet Workers Union aims to challenge the nearly 15,000 job eliminations enacted over the past year. The Alphabet Workers Union views the layoffs as unwarranted, contrary to statements made by Google leadership justifying the decisions. The union’s communications chair, Stephen McMurtry, highlighted consequences like disrupted operations, heavier workloads, and high anxiety levels for remaining staff fearful of more cuts.

Google maintains they are responsibly prioritising key areas and opportunities moving forward, which required organisational shifts involving role removal globally.

They say transition assistance has been offered internally and externally to affected individuals. Amid the planned demonstrations, some call for more empathy in the separation process. Engineering manager Kenneth Smith received notice by email and advocated for in-person meetings to soften the blow. Commentators also argue the pattern shows a lack of loyalty to long-standing personnel abruptly cut loose.

OpenAI’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Sam Altman, aims to secure billions for an AI chip venture, intending to use the funds to establish a global network of factories for chip fabrication.

The effort involves collaboration with undisclosed top chip manufacturers, as reported by Bloomberg.

Addressing a crucial aspect of running AI models, such as ChatGPT and DALL-E, the report highlights the challenge of having sufficient chips for computations.

Nvidia’s value exceeded $1 trillion last year, driven in part by its virtual monopoly, with GPT-4, Gemini, Llama 2, and other models heavily relying on its popular H100 GPUs.

The competition to manufacture high-powered chips for complex AI systems has intensified, given the limited number of fabs capable of producing such chips.

“Mr Altman and others are bidding for capacity years in advance to meet the demand,” the report noted. “To compete with industry giants like Apple, deep-pocketed investors are essential, prompting talks with SoftBank Group and G42, an Abu Dhabi-based AI holding company, to raise funds for Altman’s project.”

Notably, Microsoft and Amazon have ventured into making their own AI chips, with Google using its DeepMind AI to design processors like Tensor Processing Units (TPU).

Meta’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, revealed plans to own over 340,000 of Nvidia’s H100 GPUs by the end of the year as Meta pursues artificial general intelligence (AGI) development.

Nvidia is already gearing up with its next-generation GH200 Grace Hopper chips, while competitors like AMD, Qualcomm, and Intel have launched processors designed to power AI models on various devices, including laptops and phones.

Amazon Prime Video is undergoing a major restructuring, with a new focus on European originals.

This means cutting back on content and staff in Africa and the Middle East. While shows from the MENA region that are already in the works will still be made, new local originals in Sub Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa are on hold for now.

Meanwhile, the European team is being split into two: EU Established and EU Emerging. EU Established, led by Brigitte Ricou-Bellan, will focus on the major markets of the UK, Germany, Italy, France and Spain.

EU Emerging, led by Ritchie Ordonez, will focus on growing businesses in Benelux, the Nordics and Central and Eastern Europe. It’s not yet clear if there will be layoffs in Europe as a result of this restructuring.

The company is also creating a new role: Director of EU content and programming strategy. This person will work with both US and international colleagues on the Amazon MGM Studios pipeline.

Shifting Priorities

In a message to staff, Prime Video Europe Vice President, Barry Furlong said that the company is “carefully looking at our business to ensure we continue to prioritize our resources on what matters most to customers.” He added that the changes are designed to, “Improve the operational running of our multi-territory business and allow us to be more agile and focused.”

This move comes as a surprise, as Prime Video had been increasing its investment in Africa and the Middle East in recent years. The company had established dedicated country teams in Nigeria and South Africa, hired new employees, and signed multi-year licensing deals.

Africa had been a particular priority, and Prime Video had even said that it wanted to “tell the stories of whole communities that have never even been able to see their stories on camera before.”

It remains to be seen how this restructuring will impact Prime Video’s business in the long run. But one thing is clear: the company is now putting its focus squarely on Europe.

Africa Tech Summit Nairobi has announced ten African tech ventures that will showcase their solutions to a diverse audience of industry experts, investors and fellow innovators on February 14th and 15th.

While African startup funding declined in 2023, the investment showcase continues to foster collaborations and stimulate investment opportunities to bridge the funding gap in the ecosystem. According to data from Africa: The Big Deal, African startup funding experienced a 39 per cent decline, falling to $2.9bn in 2023 from $4.6bn recorded in the previous year.

Henry Umunnakwe, Ecosystems & Sales Manager of Africa Tech Summit shared: “Amidst the challenging backdrop of decreased funding for African startups in 2023, the resilient spirit of entrepreneurship continues to thrive across the continent, and we are delighted to introduce these 10 pioneering ventures for this edition of the Investment Showcase. Our main objective of the Showcase is to spotlight and foster connections for these ventures with both local and global investors. We look forward to welcoming over 1000 delegates to the summit to catalyse collaborative efforts and propel investments to further fuel innovation and growth throughout the continent.”

The 250+ entries received from various countries across Africa, including Kenya, Egypt, Tanzania, Nigeria, Ghana, South Sudan, Malawi, Angola, Morocco, Botswana, Benin, Congo, Uganda, South Africa, Sierra Leone and more, highlight the immense potential for innovation and partnerships in the continent. The ten selected ventures, spanning fintech, agritech, e-commerce, Web3, and climate-tech sectors, are looking to raise funding ranging from $500,000 to $15mn. They include:

Node Bio (Kenya) is utilizing cutting-edge plant science to develop crop treatment that effectively combat the adverse effects of climate change. Their innovative solution, Farmchef, enables plants to withstand drought, extreme heat, and other water-related stressors.

Valu (Egypt) is MENA’ s leading Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) lifestyle-enabling fintech platform, offering customers and businesses convenient and comprehensive financial solutions.

Bingtellar (Nigeria) is building payment infrastructure for global citizens including freelancers, remote workers, contractors, businesses. Their ramp product simplifies the process of buying and selling crypto and facilitates swift money transfer across Africa.

Dukka (Nigeria) is digitizing payments and bookkeeping solutions to assist small businesses across Africa to accept all digital payment methods.

FutureLink Technologies (Uganda) is a digital marketplace that is simplifying financial access for individuals and facilitating payments for financial cooperatives. FutureLink Technologies is the first African company to win the Global SME Finance Platinum Award for Product Innovation of the year 2022.

Tausi App (Kenya) is a beauty tech company that is leveraging technology to link beauticians to potential customers. Tausi has registered over 6000 beauticians so far.

Feegor (Nigeria) is a B2B e-commerce company that is connecting Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) to manufacturers and major wholesalers.

Peercarbon (Kenya) is a climate fintech startup leveraging granular emissions data and cutting-edge sustainable finance technology to empower African SMEs. Peercarbon’s Software as a Service (SaaS) platform provides real-time insights, making it easy for businesses to track their carbon footprint.

Regxta (Nigeria) is making financial services accessible to underserved communities and micro-businesses in rural and peri-urban areas across Africa, including internally displaced persons and refugees.

URBANET (Kenya) promotes international dialogue on development activities worldwide, providing insights on municipal and local governance, sustainable urban development, and decentralization.