India to Pioneer Agentic AI Payments on UPI, Redefining Digital Commerce

India is set to unveil the Unified Agent Protocol next week at the Global Fintech Fest in Mumbai, enabling AI agents to autonomously make small UPI payments under preset rules. This would make India one of the first countries with national infrastructure for agentic AI-powered payments.

According to the reports citing Reuters and other media outlets, the Unified Agent Protocol (UAP) is expected to be unveiled at the Global Fintech Fest in Mumbai next week.

Key Highlights

• Framework Name: Unified Agent Protocol (UAP)
• Launch Timeline: Expected announcement at Global Fintech Fest, Mumbai (next week)
• Operator: National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI)
• LHow Agentic AI Payments Will Work

• ) Delegated Authority: Builds on UPI Circle, allowing account holders to delegate playment authority to AI agents.
• Reserve Pay Integration: Lets customers block funds for multiple debits (currently capped at ₹10,000 for 90 days, limits may be revised).

Early Use Cases

• Groceries & Daily Purchases: Frequent, low-value transactions will be the first applications.
• E-commerce Platforms: Positioned to capture early demand by automating routine purchases.
• Future Sophistication: AI agents could place orders based on discounts/sale offers or even make investments at specified price thresholds.

Global Context

• Similar frameworks already exist in US, Europe, Singapore, and Australia.
• India’s rollout would make it a global pioneer in agentic commerce, leveraging UPI’s unmatched transaction scale.

Risks & Challenges

• Trust & Accountability: AI agents must be verified and registered to prevent misuse.
• Banking Limits: Current debit block caps may restrict adoption unless revised.
• Liability Framework: NPCI is expected to introduce rules for disputes, but details remain undisclosed.

Quick Comparison

Feature	India (UPI)	Global (US/EU/SG/AU)
Scale	24.5B monthly transactions	Smaller networks
Framework	Unified Agent Protocol	Proprietary company-led
Use Cases	Groceries, e-commerce, investments	Shopping, subscriptions
Trust Layer	NPCI verification, audit trails	Company-specific checks

TCS Unveils Agentic AI Platform to Revolutionize Global Drug Development

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has launched its new agentic AI platform, TCS ADD™ AgentHub, designed to transform drug development by streamlining clinical trials and pharmacovigilance workflows. The platform promises up to 40% efficiency gains in clinical data management, 30% faster study builds, and 30% cost savings in drug safety case processing.

Key Highlights of TCS ADD™ AgentHub

• Role-based AI agents: Each agent has defined responsibilities, oversight, and auditability, ensuring compliance in highly regulated pharma environments.
• Human + AI Operating Model: AI agents are embedded into enterprise workflows, while humans retain governance and decision-making authority.
• Efficiency gains: Up to 40% improvement in clinical data management activities.
• Automation benefits: Metadata-driven automation reduces clinical study build effort by 30%.
• Cost savings: End-to-end safety case processing costs cut by 30%.
• Quality control reduction: AI-powered safety agents reduce manual quality control effort by up to 50%.

Applications in Drug Development

• Clinical Trials: AI agents assist with study design, protocol digitization, clinical data review, and SDTM transformation.
• Pharmacovigilance: Agents handle individual case safety report intake, medical coding, literature analysis, and safety monitoring.
• Drug Safety: Automated workflows for adverse event reporting and compliance with regulatory standards.

Benefits for Pharma Companies

Feature	Impact
Efficiency Gains	40% faster clinical data management
Study Build Automation	30% reduction in effort
Cost Savings	30% lower safety case processing costs
Quality Control	50% less manual effort
Compliance	Built-in auditability and oversight

Challenges & Risks

• Regulatory compliance: Pharma firms must ensure AI outputs meet strict audit and governance standards.
• Integration hurdles: Legacy systems may slow adoption despite streamlined integration.
• Trust & scalability: Ensuring reliability and transparency of AI agents remains critical for industry-wide acceptance.

Strategic Outlook

TCS positions AgentHub as a scalable, audit-ready AI workforce that can accelerate drug development while improving patient safety. By embedding AI agents into pharma workflows, TCS aims to move towards autonomous enterprise functions, where humans and AI collaborate seamlessly.

NVIDIA Unveils Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 30 Billion Open‑Source AI Model for Faster Agentic Workflows

NVIDIA has just launched Nemotron 3.5 Lightning, a 30-billion-parameter open-source AI model optimized for agentic workflows. It delivers up to 4× faster output and 30% quicker task completion compared to peers, while being lightweight enough to run locally on a single GPU — even on laptops and desktops.

Key Highlights

• Architecture: Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) hybrid with Mamba-2 + Attention layers.
• Parameters: 30B total, 3B active per token (efficient activation).
• Performance: Up to 4× faster output, 30% faster agentic task completion, PinchBench accuracy: 86%.
• Deployment: Runs on RTX PCs, Jetson devices, DGX Spark, workstations, data centers, and cloud.
• Open-source availability: Free to download via HuggingFace, NVIDIA NGC, and build.nvidia.com.
• Use cases: Code review, cybersecurity monitoring, billing queries, tool calls, and multi-agent workflows.

Comparison with Other Models

Model	Parameters	Specialization	Performance	Deployment
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning	30B (3B active)	High-volume agent execution	4× faster, 30% quicker tasks	Single GPU, edge, cloud
Nemotron 3 Ultra	Larger frontier model	Planning & orchestration	Advanced reasoning	Data center/cloud
Qwen3.6 35B	35B	General-purpose	Slower task completion	Cloud-heavy

Technical Features

• Multi-token prediction: MTP + speculative decoding for concurrency.
• Draft models: DSpark (DGX Spark inference), DFlash (workload evaluation).
• Formats: BF16 (full precision) and NVFP4 (optimized inference).
• Context length: Up to 1M tokens, enabling long workflows.
• Supported languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, plus coding languages.

Strategic Context

• Open-weight AI: Jensen Huang emphasized open-weight AI as critical for innovation, lowering entry barriers for enterprises while driving GPU demand.
• Commercial use: Free to use commercially, unlike proprietary subscription-based AI services.
• Concerns: National security risks and IP leakage remain, but NVIDIA positions Nemotron as a cornerstone for agentic AI ecosystems.

WhatsApp Unveils Meta Business Agent at Mumbai Summit, Bringing AI‑driven Customer Engagement and Enterprise‑grade Conversational Commerce to India.

• WhatsApp hosts third annual Business Summit in India; announces Meta Business Agent to help businesses engage with customers and run their operations 24/7

At the third edition of its annual Business Summit in Mumbai, WhatsApp today announced Meta Business Agent – AI that lets every business show up for every customer, in every moment, as if they had an infinite team behind them. Meta Business Agent is designed to enable businesses to deliver faster, more personalized customer experiences at scale.

As businesses increasingly look to improve customer engagement and streamline operations, Meta Business Agent can deliver more relevant, personalized experiences from the very first interaction. Meta Business Agent is designed to handle key customer interactions end-to-end, around the clock including:

• Answering questions specific to the business
• Making product recommendations from the business catalog
• Booking appointments and qualifying incoming leads. 
• Enabling business owners to decide when a team member steps in to provide support

Helping close sales

Beyond customer interactions, Meta Business Agent also acts as a partner for business owners – surfacing insights from customer conversations and providing summaries of missed interactions, helping businesses stay on top of their operations and focus on growth.

Arun Srinivas, Managing Director & Country Head, Meta in India, said, "India has emerged as one of the most dynamic markets for conversational business globally, with messaging becoming the preferred way for people and businesses to connect. As AI becomes more central to the transformation of the way businesses operate, Meta Business Agent represents the next step in that journey – helping businesses harness AI to strengthen customer relationships, improve efficiency, and unlock growth."

Bringing Meta Business Agent Platform to Large Enterprises

For larger businesses that need the infrastructure to build, customize and deploy their Meta Business Agent at scale, the Meta Business Agent Platform is now available – enabling enterprises to build and customize AI-powered agents while integrating with existing business systems such as Shopify, Zendesk and Shopee. Working alongside the WhatsApp Business Platform, it provides enterprise-grade scalability, controls, and measurement.

WhatsApp also showcased how businesses like Swiggy, Madhulika Enterprises and Kaizen Adventours — early adopters of the Meta Business Agent Platform — are already building great experiences and stronger customer relationships using the AI agent.

Rohan Chhazed, Vice President- Product, Rider and Post Order Consumer Experience, Swiggy Food Marketplace said, "Technology delivers the best value when it simplifies everyday experiences for users. By bringing our delivery partner onboarding within WhatsApp with the Meta Business Agent, we are creating a faster and more intuitive journey in a platform that is already familiar to millions. This reflects our broader vision of using conversational AI to reduce complexity and make business interactions more seamless at scale. Conversational commerce is the future of how businesses will interact with their ecosystem, and we're excited to be at the forefront of this shift with Meta."

Madhulika Vikram, Founder, Madhulika Enterprises, said, “In the beauty business, clients expect immediate attention. If you don't reply in minutes, they've already moved on. As demand grew across bridal bookings, makeup courses and beauty products, we were managing hundreds of customer enquiries. Meta Business Agent was a game changer for us, because it learns about your business and handles conversations with customers. We’ve seen a 25-30% increase in conversions since we have enabled the Meta Business Agent. It’s taken care of 50-60% of my repetitive workload” 

Kaizen Adventures is a leading adventure travel company specializing in professionally managed Ladakh bike expeditions and Himalayan road trips. Sharing his views on the Meta Business Agent, Amit Hooda, Founder, Kaizen Adventours, said “Meta Business Agent helped Kaizen Adventours instantly respond to inquiries about Ladakh tours, pricing, itineraries, and bike rentals. It reduces response times, handles peak-season volumes, ensures 24/7 accuracy, and lets our team focus on operations—strengthening conversions and customer experience.”

Helping customers discover businesses

WhatsApp is also making it easier for people to discover businesses powered by Meta Business Agent. Soon, people will be able to search for a business by name directly within WhatsApp Search, or share business contacts with friends and family – making it easier to connect with trusted businesses. 

Businesses looking to enable the Meta Business Agent can click here and join the waitlist. 

About Meta

Meta is building the future of human connection, powered by artificial intelligence and immersive technologies. When Facebook launched in 2004, it changed the way people connect. Apps like Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp further empowered billions around the world. Now, Meta is moving beyond 2D screens toward experiences that foster deeper connections and unlock new possibilities.

HCLTech and ServiceNow join forces to scale enterprise AI with Google Cloud

• Gemini Enterprise-based AI agent solutions integrated with ServiceNow to drive real-world adoption of agentic AI

HCLTech, a leading global technology company, has expanded its collaboration with Google Cloud and ServiceNow to deliver AI agents for enterprise adoption on the Gemini Enterprise platform. The launch coincides with HCLTech’s sponsorship of the Sydney Google Cloud Summit 2026.

Building on HCLTech’s recently launched Gemini Enterprise business unit, the latest collaboration brings together advanced ServiceNow AI capabilities, enterprise workflow orchestration and industry expertise to enable organizations to deploy and scale AI in real business environments.

HCLTech will introduce enterprise AI solutions on Gemini Enterprise that combine Gemini’s advanced AI capabilities with ServiceNow’s workflow platform - anchored in ServiceNow’s Blueprint for Agentic Business, a framework for structured, outcome-driven AI adoption. This includes a next-generation Factory Shop Floor Assistant, which delivers real-time operational intelligence to manufacturing environments, enabling faster decision-making and improved efficiency.

Initial solutions span two high-impact domains: Field Services, where Gemini Live, integrated with ServiceNow Field Service Management, delivers real-time audio and visual intelligence to field technicians for faster issues resolution; and Customer Experience, to ensure customer intent is preserved across channels. HCLTech is also leveraging ServiceNow's AI Control Tower to enhance visibility and governance of AI agents within Gemini Enterprise, while an ITOps ServiceNow Agent—available on Google Cloud Marketplace for Gemini Enterprise—supports incident management and remediation in enterprise IT environments.

“Bringing agentic AI to the enterprise requires deep integration into the systems that businesses rely on every day,” said Satish Thomas, Vice President of Applied AI and Platform Ecosystem at Google Cloud. “Our partnership with HCLTech and ServiceNow combines the foundational power of Gemini Enterprise with industry-leading workflow and operational expertise, giving customers the tools they need to safely scale AI and accelerate innovation across their entire organization.”

“The future of enterprise AI lies in orchestrating intelligent agents across the business as a connected system of action,” said Michael Park, Senior Vice President, Global Partnerships and Channels at ServiceNow. “By bringing together ServiceNow’s AI-native platform, HCLTech’s implementation expertise, and Google Cloud’s Gemini Enterprise capabilities, we are helping organizations build the foundation for an agentic enterprise. This collaboration enables customers to orchestrate AI agents across workflows, systems and teams, accelerating productivity, strengthening governance and delivering business outcomes at scale.”

“Enterprises are moving quickly from exploring AI to embedding it at the core of their operations, and that shift requires stronger levels of integration and orchestration,” said Vijay Guntur, Chief Technology Officer and Head of Ecosystems at HCLTech. “Our collaboration with Google Cloud and ServiceNow reflects this evolution—integrating advanced AI, enterprise workflows and ecosystem scale to help clients move beyond pilots to sustained, enterprise-wide impact. By aligning AI with operational systems and industry context, we are enabling a more practical and accountable adoption of agentic AI, and our ServiceNow Agentic Blueprint gives enterprises the structured path to get there.”

“Agentic AI will only deliver enterprise value when it is built on a resilient, secure and scalable digital foundation,” said Jagadeshwar Gattu, President, Digital Foundation Services at HCLTech. “By combining HCLTech’s deep infrastructure, cloud and operations expertise with Google Cloud’s Gemini Enterprise platform and ServiceNow’s workflow and AI capabilities, we are helping clients move from experimentation to production-ready adoption. This collaboration enables enterprises to embed intelligence into mission-critical environments with the governance, visibility and operational rigor needed to drive measurable outcomes at scale.”

This expanded collaboration underscores HCLTech’s focus on enabling enterprises to transition from experimentation to scaled deployment of agentic AI, with solutions that are designed to deliver measurable impact across industries. HCLTech will showcase this focus at the Sydney Google Cloud Summit 2026, and at the Sydney ServiceNow World Forum where enterprise leaders will explore how cloud, AI and ecosystem collaboration can accelerate business transformation.

HCLTech is a global technology company, home to more than 227,000 people across 60 countries, delivering industry-leading capabilities centered around AI, digital, engineering, cloud and software, powered by a broad portfolio of technology services and products. We work with clients across all major verticals, providing industry solutions for Financial Services, Manufacturing, Life Sciences and Healthcare, Technology and Services, Semiconductor, Telecom and Media, Retail and CPG, Mobility and Public Services. Consolidated revenues as of 12 months ending March 2026 totaled $14.7 billion. To learn how we can supercharge progress for you, visit hcltech.com.

LTM Unveils BlueVerse™ iRun: AI‑Native Managed Services to Reinvent Enterprise IT Operations

• AI-native operations model enables enterprises to move from reactive service delivery to intelligent, outcome-driven managed services

LTM, the Business Creativity partner to the world’s largest enterprises, today announced the launch of BlueVerse™ for iRun, an AI-native managed services model designed to transform traditional IT operations into a resilient, intelligent, and outcome-driven operating model.

As enterprise environments grow more complex—spanning hybrid cloud, SaaS, and AI-driven ecosystems—traditional managed services models are increasingly constrained by siloed teams, static processes, and effort-led scaling.

BlueVerse for iRun addresses this shift by moving beyond headcount-based delivery to a platform-led approach powered by agentic AI, knowledge convergence, and process-as-code. Built on the BlueVerse ecosystem, iRun creates a unified intelligence layer that brings together enterprise data, telemetry, workflows, and operational context—enabling AI to reason across systems, identify root causes, and execute actions within governed guardrails.

iRun combines AI agents and human expertise to shift operations from reactive incident management to pre-emptive, self-learning, and outcome-driven service delivery. It enables improved system reliability, faster resolution cycles, and the ability to shift IT spend from maintenance (‘run’) to innovation (‘change’)—freeing capacity for transformation. iRun targets 60-70% automated resolution, 40-60% faster incident closure, and prevention of up to half of potential disruptions before they occur.

“Enterprises today expect managed services to deliver more than efficiency—they expect intelligence, adaptability, and measurable outcomes,” said Krishnan Iyer, Chief Growth Officer, LTM. “BlueVerse for iRun brings together agentic AI, operational intelligence, and governed automation to help clients move beyond effort-led models to resilient, outcome-driven operations that scale with confidence.”

With governance embedded by design, BlueVerse for iRun incorporates policy-bound execution, human-in-the-loop decisioning, and full auditability—ensuring enterprise-grade trust as AI scales across operations.

BlueVerse for iRun extends the BlueVerse ecosystem into integrated operations—spanning application management, cognitive infrastructure services, and cybersecurity—helping enterprises Outcreate traditional managed services into an AI-driven model that delivers compounding business outcomes. For more information, visit ltm.com/services/iRun .

Tech Mahindra Introduces Agentic ADMS for Autonomous Enterprise Transformation

Tech Mahindra has announced the launch of its new Agentic Development & Modernization Services (ADMS), a next‑generation portfolio that integrates agentic AI across the application lifecycle to help enterprises modernize legacy systems, optimize operations, and build AI‑native digital ecosystems.

Key Announcement

• Launch Date & Location: June 3, 2026, Pune.
• Company: Tech Mahindra (NSE: TECHM), a global provider of technology consulting and digital solutions.
• Objective: Redefine traditional Application Development and Maintenance Services (ADMS) into Agentic Development & Modernization Services, embedding autonomous AI into enterprise application lifecycles.

Core Features of Agentic ADMS

• Modernizing Platforms for Autonomy: Re‑architecting enterprise platforms into modular, API‑first, AI‑ready foundations.
• Agentic Software Engineering: Embedding AI agents across DevSecOps lifecycles to boost productivity and accelerate delivery.
• Autonomous Operations: Leveraging intelligent automation, knowledge graphs, reasoning engines, and AIOps for real‑time monitoring and self‑healing systems.
• Autonomous Quality Fabric: AI‑driven quality assurance agents continuously optimize testing and reliability across DevOps pipelines.

Powered by Tech Mahindra Platforms

• Swifter.io, AppGinieZ, Reforge, LitmusT and other accelerators support autonomous engineering, modernization, intelligent operations, and AI‑enabled quality assurance.
• Vector Squad delivery model combines human expertise with AI agents.
• Service Tokens pricing enables modular consumption, clearer value realization, and predictable costs.

Industry Context

• Kunal Purohit (President – Next Gen Verticals, Tech Mahindra): Highlighted rising enterprise demand for intelligent operations and autonomous software engineering, with spending on next‑gen application services expected to grow significantly.
• Alisha Mittal (VP, Everest Group): Noted that the application services market is entering a “more agentic phase,” moving beyond traditional automation toward AI‑enabled delivery models that support continuous evolution and resilience.

Strategic Impact

• For Enterprises: Faster modernization of legacy estates, improved operational predictability, and scalable AI‑native platforms.
• For Global Markets: Positions Tech Mahindra as a leader in autonomous enterprise engineering.
• For India’s Tech Sector: Reinforces India’s role in shaping AI‑driven enterprise transformation globally.

At a Glance

Pillar	Focus Area	Outcome
Modernizing Platforms	API‑first, modular, AI‑ready	Adaptive, agent‑driven execution
Agentic Engineering	AI agents in DevSecOps	Faster delivery, better outcomes
Autonomous Operations	Automation, AIOps, reasoning	Real‑time monitoring, self‑healing
Quality Fabric	AI‑driven assurance	Continuous reliability & testing

Google I/O 2026: Google Turns Search Into Always‑On AI Agents

Google I/O 2026 has redefined Search into a proactive AI agent ecosystem powered by Gemini 3.5, Spark, and Omni. Search is no longer just about queries — it now continuously monitors the web, books services, generates apps, and executes tasks conversationally, marking the beginning of Google’s “agentic Gemini era.”

With the end of the Google’s flagship event, Google’s pivot: Search is no longer just about queries — it’s about proactive AI agents that help you do things.

The search engine giant announced that the Search is being rebuilt as a fusion of AI and traditional indexing — enabling users not just to find information but to understand, build, and act on it directly.

Key Highlights

• Gemini 3.5 Flash — Google’s fastest AI model yet, optimized for multi-step workflows, coding, and automation, delivering outputs up to 4x faster than rival frontier models. It now powers Search AI Mode globally.
• Search Agents — Persistent AI agents embedded in Search that monitor apartment listings, product prices, ticket availability, and news updates 24/7, notifying users automatically.
• Gemini Spark — A 24/7 proactive personal agent running in the background, capable of organizing emails, preparing briefs, coordinating events, and executing tasks across Google apps even when devices are offline.
• Gemini Omni — A multimodal AI model that can generate and edit videos, remix scenes, and combine text, images, audio, and video into new outputs. It introduces “any-to-any” creative capabilities.
• Generative UI in Search — A redesigned interface supporting multimodal inputs (text, photos, videos, files, browser tabs) and enabling users to create and manage multiple AI agents directly in Search.

Comparison: Traditional Search vs Agentic Search

Traditional Search	Agentic Search
Keyword-based queries	Conversational, multimodal inputs
Static results	Dynamic, proactive monitoring
User-driven discovery	AI-driven execution of tasks
Limited personalization	Persistent agents tailored to user needs
Informational	Transactional (bookings, shopping, automation)

Strategic Implications

• Shift in Paradigm — Search evolves from a query-response tool into a personal operating system for daily life.
• Competitive Landscape — Google’s agentic AI directly challenges OpenAI’s autonomous agents and Microsoft Copilot integrations.
• Enterprise Impact — Businesses must adapt to AI-mediated discovery and transactions, where visibility depends on integration with agentic workflows rather than SEO alone.
• User Experience — The gap between intent and execution collapses — users can move from “wanting” to “doing” instantly.

Risks & Challenges

• Privacy Concerns — Continuous monitoring raises questions about data security and consent.
• Bias & Transparency — Google promises stronger AI safety systems and SynthID verification, but concerns remain about algorithmic bias.
• Market Dependence — Businesses may become increasingly dependent on Google’s agent ecosystem for visibility and transactions.

Conclusion

Google’s I/O 2026 announcements mark the biggest overhaul of Search in its history. By embedding Gemini-powered agents into every layer of its ecosystem, Google is positioning Search as a living intelligence system — proactive, multimodal, and transactional. This shift will reshape how individuals, enterprises, and competitors interact with the digital world.

Ex-Google, Amazon Execs-Founded SwishX Launches World’s Ist Agentic AI Platform for Pharma & Medtech

• Bengaluru-based startup seed-funded for $2.2 million backed by Powerhouse Ventures, Blume Ventures, Sadev Ventures, Atrium Ventures, and others
• Targets $5M ARR and 100+ enterprise clients
• Plans expansion across emerging markets including Latin America, Southeast Asia, Middle East, Africa, and Eastern Europe

SwishX today announced its launch, introducing the World’s first Agentic AI platform built exclusively for pharmaceutical and medtech companies, aimed at transforming sales, marketing, distribution, and business growth through artificial intelligence.

The Bengaluru-headquartered startup is targeting $5 million in contracted ARR and 100+ Enterprise clients by end of current FY 2026-27, and plans expansion into Latin America, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Eastern Europe. SwishX has also raised $2.2 million in seed funding backed by Powerhouse Ventures, Blume Ventures, Sadev Ventures, Atrium Ventures, and other investors. These emerging markets, along with India, represent a $400 billion pharma and medtech opportunity, with commercial operations expected to grow to $770 billion by 2033 at a CAGR exceeding 12%.

India, dubbed as the ‘pharmacy of the world’, alone supplies 20% of the world’s medicines, and exports to over 200 countries, and is home to the highest number of US FDA-approved manufacturing plants outside the United States. However, most companies still lack real-time visibility into key business questions - which public tenders out of thousands they have a real shot at winning, where is the revenue leakage happening, what is actually selling at the retailer level, whether marketing efforts to engage doctors are generating results? All this is part of a long-standing problem in the pharma industry, where many critical commercial decisions still depend on spreadsheets, disconnected software, manual workflows, and delayed reporting. SwishX aims to address these gaps through AI Agent-led solutions and improve revenue outcomes by up to 30%.

SwishX’s specialized AI Agents capture siloed data, automate business workflows, learn nuances of every decision and build a functional memory to help business teams accelerate their execution.

While starting with India, SwishX is helping the pharma companies to further grow in other countries as well by combining AI with local market data of different countries. The platform autonomously evaluates thousands of tenders globally, surfaces most high-probability win opportunities, analyzes complex 500+ pages documents, recommends likely winning pricing, and drafts proposals within minutes. It also enables quick conversion of long marketing PDFs into highly engaging personalized video reels for doctors - reducing the time taken from weeks to just one day.

Dushyant Sapre, Founder & CEO, SwishX, said, “India’s pharma sector, recognized as the Pharmacy of the World, drives revenues of over USD 65 billion and Emerging Markets combined drive USD 400 billion while distributing into over 200 countries. Manufacturing and R&D have become genuinely world-class, but how these companies sell, market, and distribute, is still stuck in the past. Companies often struggle to know where losses are happening, what is selling, which tenders matter most, or how effectively teams are executing in the market. AI Agents change that completely. The next big transformation in this industry is not going to happen in the lab. It is going to happen in how these companies go to market. For the first time, companies can move to real-time autonomous execution.”

SwishX is purpose built specifically for the complexity of emerging markets. India alone has over 1.2 million pharmacies, compared to just ~1,00,000 in the US. Additionally, 30-60% of procurement happens through government tenders, rate contracts and generic competition is significantly more intense.

SwishX is being launched at a time when pharma companies are accelerating AI adoption with industry estimates suggesting that AI could unlock $60–110 billion in annual value globally in this sector.

SwishX is not a traditional CRM or reporting tool, but a complete Agentic AI-platform combining intelligence and execution. Over the long term, SwishX aims to build a vertically integrated AI system for the entire value chain of life sciences companies - faster generic and biosimilar drug discovery, drug development, and autonomous multi-market commercial execution. For now, SwishX is anchored where the pain is most immediate and most measurable.

About SwishX

SwishX is a Bengaluru-based Agentic AI startup building “outcome first” solutions for pharmaceutical, medtech, and life sciences companies across Emerging Markets. It is the world's first agentic AI platform designed as a system of action for the pharma industry, that not only turns complex data into clear decisions, but also helps teams execute those decisions faster and at scale using autonomous AI agents.

Built for the complexity of emerging markets, SwishX helps pharma companies move beyond spreadsheets and fragmented systems. It enables companies to improve sales execution, strengthen marketing and channel engagement, streamline distribution networks, and automate critical workflows through autonomous AI agents, proprietary data sets and real-time market intelligence.

The platform spans 4 products: Tender IQ (Agentic AI Tender & RFP Automation), Contract IQ (Agentic AI Hospital Rate Contract Automation), Marketing IQ (Agentic AI HCP & Rep Engagement), Channel IQ (Agentic AI Channel Engagement). The company is SOC-2 compliant with data encryption in transit and rest.

Starting with India, the company plans to expand across Latin America, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, with a long-term vision to build a vertically integrated AI platform for the life sciences sector across the full business lifecycle: from generic drug development to multi market distribution.

IBM and Yotta Partner to Deliver Secure, Sovereign Agentic AI for Enterprises and Government

(L-R) Sandip Patel, Managing Director, IBM India & South Asia; Sunil Gupta, Co-Founder, Managing Director & CEO, Yotta Data Services; Sriram Raghavan, General Manager, IBM Software, India and Software Innovation Lab

• The collaboration intends to host IBM watsonx Orchestrate on Yotta's Shakti Cloud and bring IBM Sovereign Core to India, enabling enterprises to scale trusted, compliant AI

IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Yotta Data Services Private Limited ("Yotta") today announced plans to enter into a strategic partnership to deliver an Agentic AI platform for enterprises and government organisations in India. The platform is proposed to be built using IBM watsonx Orchestrate and deployed on Yotta's Shakti Cloud, to help organisations scale AI adoption while meeting evolving requirements around data residency, security, and regulatory compliance.

As enterprises move from AI experimentation to operational deployment, there is increasing demand for platforms that can orchestrate AI-driven workflows across business functions while maintaining governance and control. The proposed platform will enable organisations to deploy and manage AI agents across IT service management, HR, finance, procurement, and customer support.

As part of the collaboration, IBM and Yotta also intend to bring IBM Sovereign Core onto Yotta's Shakti Cloud. IBM Sovereign Core, now generally available, is a software platform designed to help organisations build and operate AI-ready sovereign environments — delivering continuous compliance monitoring, verifiable control, and governed AI execution across data, operations, technology, and AI. Together, the two offerings are intended to give Indian organisations a complete foundation for deploying agentic AI at scale, without compromising on compliance or control.

"AI innovation in India must be anchored in sovereignty, security, and performance. Together with IBM, we propose to enable enterprises to harness the power of agentic AI on a secure, India-hosted cloud, so they can innovate with confidence while maintaining control over their data and operations," said Sunil Gupta, Co-Founder, Managing Director & CEO, Yotta Data Services.

Yotta's Shakti Cloud provides scalable GPU infrastructure and AI services designed for Indian enterprises. Combined with IBM watsonx Orchestrate — an enterprise agentic AI platform — the proposed solution is intended to help Indian organisations adopt AI with speed and security, enabling AI-driven orchestration that accelerates time-to-value and streamlines operations across functions.

IBM Sovereign Core: Making Digital Sovereignty Operational

IBM Sovereign Core introduces a new model for operational sovereignty, where governance, compliance, and control are built into the system from the start. IBM defines digital sovereignty across four pillars:

• Operational Sovereignty — control over how environments are operated
• Data Sovereignty — control over data at rest, in use, and in motion
• Technology Sovereignty — open, modular architecture that avoids vendor lock-in
• AI Sovereignty — control over where models run and how inference is governed. 

IBM Sovereign Core delivers an integrated software platform combining control plane, identity, security, compliance, and AI execution functions within a single deployment model. Key capabilities include a customer-operated control plane, in-boundary identity and encryption, continuous compliance monitoring and evidence generation, preloaded regulatory frameworks, governed AI execution, and an open, modular architecture built on Red Hat OpenShift and Red Hat AI.

By intending to host IBM Sovereign Core on Yotta's Shakti Cloud — an India-based, MeitY-empanelled infrastructure — the partnership aims to deliver a sovereign environment purpose-built for India's regulatory requirements, supporting enterprises and government organisations in meeting data residency mandates, maintaining audit-ready compliance evidence, and deploying AI workloads within defined sovereign boundaries.

"Indian enterprises are increasingly focused on operationalising AI in a way that is secure, governed, and aligned with regulatory expectations. This collaboration will combine IBM's AI capabilities with Yotta's sovereign cloud infrastructure to help organisations scale AI responsibly — embedding sovereignty, governance, transparency, and trust from the outset," said Sandip Patel, Managing Director, IBM India & South Asia.

IBM and Yotta intend to jointly pursue go-to-market initiatives including solution co-creation, proof of concepts, and technical enablement, targeting organisations across BFSI, public sector, manufacturing, and digital-native industries.

About Yotta Data Services Private Limited

Yotta Data Services is a sovereign cloud infrastructure and platform services provider, offering cloud, AI cloud, data centre hosting, connectivity, media tech and cybersecurity services; managed applications; and a wide range of managed IT services. Yotta operates its cloud regions at its hyperscale data centre parks in Panvel (Navi Mumbai) and Greater Noida (Delhi NCR). Yotta's homegrown, open-source-based Sovereign hyperscale cloud, Yntraa, is MeitY empanelled (VCC and GCC). Yotta has also launched Shakti Cloud, a platform providing enterprises with a comprehensive suite of AI services including AI labs, AI workspaces, Shakti Studio AI Inference platform, access to NVIDIA NIM services, and Kubernetes clusters with GPU resources. Yotta is the only NVIDIA Cloud Partner (NCP) across the APAC region to be part of the NVIDIA Exemplar cloud initiative and is one of only six Reference Architecture Platform NCPs globally. For more information, visit www.yotta.com.

About IBM

IBM is a leading provider of global hybrid cloud and AI, and consulting expertise. We help clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. Thousands of governments and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM's hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM's breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and consulting deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM's long-standing commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service. Visit www.ibm.com for more information.

SAP to Acquire Dremio, Building Iceberg‑Native Lakehouse to Power Agentic AI at Enterprise Scale

SAP SE has announced plans to acquire Dremio, a leading open-source data lakehouse platform, to strengthen its Business Data Cloud and accelerate agentic AI capabilities. The deal, expected to close in Q3 2026 pending regulatory approval, will make SAP’s platform Apache Iceberg-native, enabling seamless integration of SAP and non-SAP data.

Dremio is a U.S.-based data lakehouse company headquartered in Mountain View, California, founded in 2015 by Tomer Shiran and Jacques Nadeau. It has raised over $420 million from major investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Insight Partners, Redpoint Ventures, and Sapphire Ventures.

Dremio positions itself as the Agentic Lakehouse, an Apache Iceberg-native data platform designed for AI agents and enterprise analytics. It enables federated queries across multiple data sources without ETL pipelines, providing a unified semantic layer that adds business context for AI and human users alike.  

Key Highlights of the Acquisition

• Acquirer: SAP SE (NYSE: SAP)
• Target: Dremio, an open, high-performance data lakehouse platform
• Announcement Date: May 4, 2026
• Closing Timeline: Expected Q3 2026, subject to regulatory approval
• Financial Terms: Not disclosed
• Strategic Goal: Enhance SAP Business Data Cloud and SAP HANA Cloud to unify SAP and non-SAP data for real-time analytics and AI workloads

Why SAP is Acquiring Dremio

• Data Fragmentation Challenge: Many enterprise AI projects fail due to fragmented, proprietary data formats lacking business context.
• Dremio’s Solution: Provides an Apache Iceberg-native lakehouse that eliminates data movement and format conversion.
• Agentic AI Enablement: Accelerates AI-ready context, reducing integration friction and compliance risks.
• Serverless Architecture: Elastic scaling improves economics of enterprise analytics by removing fixed capacity requirements.

SAP’s Broader AI Strategy

• Alongside Dremio, SAP is also acquiring Prior Labs, a pioneer in Tabular Foundation Models (TFMs).
• SAP is committing over €1 billion to scale Prior Labs globally.
• The combination of Dremio’s open lakehouse and Prior Labs’ TFMs positions SAP to deliver enterprise-scale agentic AI solutions.

Industry Impact

• Open-Source Commitment: SAP will continue investing in Apache Iceberg, Apache Polaris, and Apache Arrow.
• Competitive Landscape: Dremio differentiates itself from SAP’s existing partners like Snowflake and Databricks.
• Customer Base: Dremio is trusted by Shell, TD Bank, and Michelin.

Summary

SAP’s acquisition of Dremio marks a strategic leap in enterprise AI, addressing the critical bottleneck of fragmented data. By embedding Dremio’s Iceberg-native lakehouse into SAP Business Data Cloud, SAP aims to deliver governed, AI-ready intelligence at scale, while reinforcing its commitment to open-source innovation.

Meta Launches One of World’s Largest CPU‑Based AI Expansions with AWS Graviton5

Meta has signed a landmark deal with AWS to deploy tens of millions of Graviton5 cores, marking one of the largest CPU‑based AI infrastructure expansions to date. This partnership reflects a strategic shift toward powering agentic AI workloads—real‑time reasoning, code generation, and multi‑step orchestration—on purpose‑built silicon.

It is considered one of the world’s largest CPU‑based infrastructure expansions because Meta is deploying tens of millions of AWS Graviton5 cores at once—making it one of the biggest single CPU deployments ever announced by a major tech company. This scale places Meta among the largest Graviton customers globally and signals a fundamental shift in AI infrastructure design.

Meta’s initial rollout already involves tens of millions of Graviton cores, with flexibility to expand further. Few companies have ever announced CPU deployments at this magnitude.

The infrastructure is designed to support billions of AI interactions daily, powering agentic AI workloads such as reasoning, orchestration, and code generation.

Meta is now officially one of the largest AWS Graviton customers worldwide, surpassing most other enterprises that use Graviton for cloud workloads.

Why This Deal Matters

• Scale: Meta becomes one of the largest Graviton customers globally, starting with tens of millions of cores and room to expand.
• Shift in AI Infrastructure: While GPUs remain critical for training large models, agentic AI workloads are CPU‑intensive—requiring chips optimized for reasoning and orchestration rather than raw matrix multiplication.
• Energy Efficiency: Graviton5, built on 3‑nanometer technology, delivers up to 25% better performance than its predecessor while reducing environmental impact.

AWS Graviton5: Technical Highlights

AWS Graviton5 is Amazon Web Services’ latest generation of custom‑built ARM‑based CPUs, designed specifically for cloud workloads. It delivers up to 25% better performance than Graviton4, packs 192 cores per chip, and features a cache five times larger—making it one of the most powerful and energy‑efficient CPUs available for large‑scale AI and enterprise applications.   

• 192 cores with a cache 5× larger than the previous generation.
• 33% faster inter‑core communication, enabling higher bandwidth and reduced latency.
• Built on the AWS Nitro System, ensuring high performance, availability, and security.
• Supports Elastic Fabric Adapter (EFA) for low‑latency, high‑bandwidth communication—critical for distributed agentic AI tasks.

Meta’s Strategic Goals

• Diversification of Compute: Expanding to Graviton allows Meta to run CPU‑intensive workloads efficiently at scale.
• Agentic AI at Scale: Infrastructure capable of handling billions of interactions and coordinating multi‑step agent workflows.
• Sustainability: Leveraging Graviton’s efficiency aligns Meta’s AI expansion with sustainability targets.

Industry Implications

• For AWS: Demonstrates AWS’s ability to deliver custom silicon integrated with its full AI stack.
• For Meta: Positions Meta as a leader in agentic AI infrastructure with a hybrid compute strategy.
• For the Market: Signals a broader industry trend—CPU‑optimized chips complement GPU‑driven training.

Comparison: GPU vs. Graviton CPU Workloads

Aspect	GPU (e.g., Nvidia H100)	AWS Graviton5 CPU
Best For	Training large AI models	Agentic AI workloads (reasoning, orchestration, code generation)
Core Count	Thousands of parallel cores	192 high‑performance cores
Latency	Higher for multi‑step tasks	Lower, optimized for reasoning
Energy Efficiency	High but power‑hungry	25% better than previous gen, built for efficiency
Scalability	Clustered GPU farms	Tens of millions of CPU cores, distributed workloads

Expert Voices

• Nafea Bshara, Amazon VP: “This isn’t just about chips; it’s about giving customers the infrastructure foundation to build AI that scales to billions worldwide.”
• Santosh Janardhan, Meta: “Expanding to Graviton allows us to run CPU‑intensive workloads behind agentic AI with the performance and efficiency we need at scale.”

In short: Meta’s massive Graviton5 deployment with AWS signals a new chapter in AI infrastructure—where CPUs, not just GPUs, become central to powering agentic AI systems at global scale.

HCLTech Launches Gemini Enterprise Unit to Drive Agentic AI Adoption

HCLTech, a leading global technology company, today announced the launch of a dedicated Gemini Enterprise Business Unit. The new business unit, the first of its kind from a global system integrator, will accelerate the development and adoption of industry‑specific solutions built on Google Gemini Enterprise.

HCLTech’s Gemini Enterprise Business Unit aims to enable enterprises globally unlock the full value of generative and agentic AI. Enterprises can transition from manual, fragmented processes to unified, automated decision‑making, driving measurable outcomes such as reduced unplanned maintenance downtime, stronger fraud mitigation and improved diagnostic accuracy.

"HCLTech continues to be an essential partner in bringing Google Cloud technologies to enterprises worldwide," said Kevin Ichhpurani, President, Global Partner Ecosystem at Google Cloud. "By combining HCLTech's industry expertise with Google Cloud's agentic platform, we're providing our joint customers with the tailored, industry-specific solutions necessary to tackle their most complex business challenges.”

“The new dedicated Gemini Enterprise business unit is aligned with our vision to help customers accelerate industry solution-led AI adoption and further strengthens our partnership with Google Cloud. The two awards reflect our focus on solving real business challenges. Whether modernizing core infrastructure or applying Physical AI and Agentic AI to industry‑specific needs, we work closely with our clients in deploying technology, helping them move forward with clarity and confidence in achieving their business goals,” said Vijay Guntur, CTO and Head of Ecosystems at HCLTech.

HCLTech has won the prestigious 2026 Google Cloud Partner of the Year Awards in two categories: Global Infrastructure Modernization – Migration, and Services & Industry Solutions – Energy and Manufacturing.

Learn more about HCLTech’s Google Cloud capabilities: https://www.hcltech.com/google-cloud

Tata Steel Deploys 300+ AI Agents with Google Cloud to Redefine Industrial Efficiency

Tata Steel, a global leader in industrial manufacturing, and Google Cloud today announced a major expansion of their strategic partnership to architect the future of steel and advance Tata Steel’s unified, enterprise-wide agentic AI strategy. Using Google Cloud’s unified technology stack, Tata Steel is rapidly scaling autonomous capabilities across its vast global organisation, successfully deploying a fleet of over 300 specialised AI agents in just nine months to drive efficiency and precision across its global operations.

"Working with Google Cloud has allowed us to turn AI from a technical experiment into a specialised partner for every employee. This isn't just about new tools; it’s about a continuous engine of execution that enables our people to act on insights instantly. From predicting asset maintenance to reducing customer response times, we are using agentic AI to simplify the most complex parts of our business and drive execution at an entirely new scale," said Jayanta Banerjee, Chief Information Officer, Tata Steel.

Sashi Sreedharan, Managing Director, Google Cloud India, said: "While many industrial players are still navigating the complexities of digital transformation, Tata Steel has moved at unprecedented speed to deploy AI at a scale few in the industry have achieved. Their success demonstrates what is possible when an organisation anchors its strategy in a unified AI and data ecosystem. By creating a new blueprint for autonomous business processes at scale, Tata Steel has demonstrated that the synergy between a unified data cloud and generative AI is the key to turning industrial complexity into a distinct, data-driven competitive edge."

Turning data into a competitive edge

Specialised AI is only as powerful as the decades of operational data that fuels it - and Tata Steel’s early investment in a consolidated data architecture on Google Cloud enabled the Company to move beyond fragmented tools to create a single, enterprise-wide engine for execution. This transformation is driven by two key platforms that bridge the gap between complex data and real-world action:

The first is Zen AI which is empowering a new generation of developers in Tata Steel. This internal low-code platform enables employees who are not data scientists - such as software developers and frontline managers – to build, test, and deploy their own specialised AI agents. Built using Google Cloud’s Agent Development Kit (ADK) and integrated with BigQuery and Google Cloud Storage, Zen AI unifies decades of structured operational data with unstructured sources like video and documents within a secure, governed framework. This in turn has transformed Tata Steel’s global workforce into a distributed engine of innovation, where small, agile teams can now deploy enterprise-grade AI solutions with speed and precision that rivals the most nimble technology disruptors.

The second is the Tata Steel Digital Assistant (TDA) - a sophisticated internal portal that synthesises once-siloed information into a single interface, acting as a command center for decision making. With the ability to query data across three distinct domains - global public data, internal enterprise systems (such as operational APIs, SOPs, and financial records), and proprietary user data (including call recordings, complex spreadsheets, and PDFs) - TDA allows employees to navigate volatility with unprecedented precision. For example, by layering real-time global news and geopolitical sentiment over traditional commodity price data, the AI agents can provide predictive market intelligence, helping the Company stay ahead of supply chain shifts and market fluctuations. By turning data like call recordings and PDFs into actionable insights, Tata Steel is also transforming its vast organisational knowledge into a distinct, data-driven competitive advantage.

Driving organisational efficiency and transforming employee experience with AI

Tata Steel is also using agentic AI to eliminate administrative bottlenecks and reshape how the Company manages internal operations. For example, TDA assists the internal HR helpdesk in resolving more than 70% of routine employee tickets autonomously, saving hours of time for individuals across teams.

This efficiency further extends into core business functions through a dedicated fleet of business process agents. These agents work in harmony to streamline complex back-office workflows, including intelligent invoice processing, goods and services tax (GST) creditable/non-creditable classifications, and specialised contract analysis. By automating these repetitive, manual tasks, Tata Steel is easing the strain on teams across the organisation and allowing them to focus on high-value strategic initiatives.

Tata Steel’s agentic deployments are underpinned and supported by a scalable infrastructure built on Google Cloud Run. This enables the system to handle demand spikes instantly while scaling to zero when idle. With access to over 200 models on Google Cloud’s AI Agent Platform, Tata Steel ensures the optimal AI model is matched to every task, while also maintaining strict lifecycle management and governance.

AI-driven safety and operational excellence on the shop floor

Beyond administrative tasks, this agentic ecosystem is driving immediate impact across the manufacturing floor, where safety remains the highest priority. By integrating AI directly into industrial workflows, the Company has shifted from traditional monitoring to proactive, real-time intervention.

Central to this is Safety EyeQ, a specialised agent that analyses live video feeds in high-risk zones to ensure strict adherence to Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). By identifying hazards – such as moving large equipment in proximity to hot material or any SOP deviation – the agent provides complete situational intelligence & triggers real-time alerts for immediate corrective action. This intelligence extends across the value chain through Asset Sphere agents, which evaluate equipment health to provide proactive maintenance plans, preventing unplanned downtime.

This multimodal approach leverages Google’s Large Language and Vision–Language Models such as Gemini and Palli Gemma. The same engine is also enhancing customer service, where specialised agents now automatically analyse complaint artifacts to detect complaint intent and defects from images and route issues to resolver groups, successfully reducing average turnaround time by 50%.

Palo Alto Networks Completes Acquisition of Koi to Secure the Agentic Endpoint

Palo Alto Networks® (NASDAQ: PANW), the global cybersecurity leader, today announced the completion of its acquisition of Koi. With this acquisition, Palo Alto Networks defines a new category of protection: Agentic Endpoint Security (AES). Koi's unique solution to securing vibe coding agents and autonomous endpoint tools comes as the industry reaches an inflection point of agentic adoption.

The rapid adoption of tools like Claude Code and OpenClaw are driving incredible productivity gains, which will be critical to countering the security challenges posed by the latest AI models. But these agentic tools themselves have also greatly expanded the endpoint attack surface. By integrating Koi’s technology with Prisma® AIRS™, Palo Alto Networks will extend visibility and security to agentic AI on the endpoint, offering a single control plane to secure enterprise-wide AI adoption with AES. In addition, this acquisition enables Palo Alto Networks to introduce a new module for Cortex XDR® to identify and remediate risks within the AI software ecosystem. Koi’s capabilities will also remain available as a standalone offering, allowing every customer to benefit from industry leading agentic endpoint security capabilities alongside their existing EDR solutions.

Lee Klarich, Chief Product & Technology Officer of Palo Alto Networks, said:

Agentic AI presents tremendous opportunity for the enterprise, yet they create a new attack surface that traditional security tools were not built to detect. These agents operate with access to critical systems and sensitive data, creating the ultimate insider threat. With the acquisition of Koi, we are delivering the only solution I’ve seen to secure vibe coding and agentic AI at the endpoint, so our customers don’t have to choose between innovation and security.

Amit Assaraf, CEO and Co-Founder of Koi, said:

By joining Palo Alto Networks, we will be able to provide our customers with the most comprehensive solution for securing all AI and software on the endpoint, and across the enterprise. Together, we are establishing Agentic Endpoint Security as the new imperative, giving our customers the secure foundation they need to lead in an AI-native world.

Learn more about how Palo Alto Networks will integrate Koi into its solutions. 

About Palo Alto Networks

Palo Alto Networks (NASDAQ: PANW), the global AI cybersecurity leader, protects our digital way of life with a comprehensive portfolio of cybersecurity solutions and platforms across Network, Cloud, Security Operations, AI and Identity. Trusted by 70,000+ customers and powered by Unit 42 threat intelligence, our AI-driven platforms eliminate complexity, empowering enterprises to modernize with confidence and securing the speed of innovation. Explore the future of security at www.paloaltonetworks.com.

Palo Alto Networks, Cortex, Cortex XDR, Prisma AIRS and the Palo Alto Networks logo are trademarks of Palo Alto Networks, Inc. in the United States and in jurisdictions throughout the world. All other trademarks, trade names, or service marks used or mentioned herein belong to their respective owners.

Wipro Unveils Dedicated AI‑Native Unit, Strengthening ‘Services as Software’ Strategy

Wipro Limited (NYSE: WIT, BSE: 507685, NSE: WIPRO), a leading AI‑powered technology services and consulting company, today announced the launch of a dedicated AI-Native Business & Platforms Unit to complement its services business. This strengthens Wipro’s position in a “services as software” world, placing it at the forefront of innovation while delivering Consulting-led, AI-powered transformation for clients.

With targeted investments and a distinct operating model, the unit will accelerate the development of enterprise‑grade agentic AI solutions and enhance outcome‑based value creation. It will also incubate new AI‑led business streams through an invest-build-partner approach, working in close collaboration with Wipro Ventures and its broader partner ecosystem.

The business unit will bring together a rich portfolio of platforms and AI-native businesses. It will own and scale Wipro Intelligence’s platform assets, including industry platforms such as NetOxygen (AI‑powered lending), CROAMIS (integrated aviation cargo operations), IHS and HPS (healthcare platforms), Enterprise Telco AI, and delivery platforms such as WINGS and WEGA. Supported by dedicated forward-deployed engineering teams, it will help clients unlock value faster, strengthen Wipro’s integrated platforms and services offerings, and enable more scalable, non-linear growth.

“This strategic pivot further sharpens Wipro Intelligence’s ability to deliver tangible value to clients and drive stronger business outcomes,” said Srini Pallia, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director, Wipro Limited. “It positions us to build and scale AI-led platforms at an unprecedented speed and unlock new growth opportunities. By deepening our capabilities across data, workflows, decision engines, and infrastructure, we are well-positioned to lead in the era of intelligent transformation.”

Nagendra Bandaru, President and Managing Partner of Technology Services GBL, who has been with Wipro for nearly three decades, has been appointed as the CEO of the new business unit, effective immediately. He will continue to report to the CEO and MD Srini Pallia. Nagendra is an accomplished leader with a track record of building high-performing businesses and scaling innovative platforms and transformative solutions, underpinned by deep expertise and trusted relationships with clients and partners.

Kanwar Singh joins Wipro as the new President and Managing Partner of Technology Services GBL. Kanwar will report to the CEO and MD Srini Pallia and join the Wipro Executive Leadership. He is a seasoned technology leader with over 30 years of experience and has led complex, global initiatives spanning industries such as retail, consumer packaged goods, manufacturing, and travel & transportation. His solid functional expertise includes digital interventions, solution architecture, automation, and global delivery management. He is widely recognized for his strategic vision, ability to deliver exceptional client value, and proven success in implementing global transformation programs.

Wipro’s strategic pivot with the AI-Native Business & Platforms Unit positions it for scalable growth, sharper competitiveness, and stronger Consulting-led, AI-driven client outcomes, building a solid foundation for sustained growth and innovation.

These changes are effective April 1, 2026.

HCLTech Unveils AI Force 2.0, Transforming Enterprise Workflows with Agentic AI

HCLTech, a leading global technology company, today announced the launch of AI Force 2.0, the next evolution of its proprietary enterprise AI platform.

The new version integrates agentic intelligence with generative AI to help enterprises accelerate and augment workflows across software and data engineering, IT operations and enterprise business processes. It also improves decision‑making and business process efficiency, while maintaining strong governance, security and measurable ROI.

AI Force 2.0 is a model agnostic, modular platform unifying engineering, operations and applications within a single intelligence fabric. The platform enables AI agents to analyze data, make context aware decisions and take autonomous action at scale.

The platform offers an extensive library of prebuilt assets, including prompts, agents, workflows and ready-to-deploy use cases, while allowing enterprises to create and customize solutions aligned to their specific needs. AI Force 2.0 also strengthens HCLTech’s enterprise governance framework through embedded Responsible AI evaluators that ensure trust, auditability and fairness.

“AI Force 2.0 represents a significant leap forward in how enterprises harness AI solutions for transformation. By unifying agentic intelligence with enterprise‑grade GenAI, we are enabling our clients to fundamentally reimagine software, data and operations lifecycles. This platform is engineered to deliver deep automation, accelerated modernization and unprecedented agility, helping global enterprises move faster, operate smarter and unlock value at scale,” said Vijay Guntur, Chief Technology Officer and Head of Ecosystems at HCLTech.

OpenCFO Raises $2M to Build the AI-Native Financial Operating System

OpenCFO, an AI-native financial operations platform, today announced the successful completion of its first institutional funding round, raising $2 million. The funding round was led by Endiya Partners, and saw participation from prominent angel investors across both the United States and India.

OpenCFO is building an agentic AI financial operating system that unifies and automates accounts payable, receivable, and treasury workflows for mid-market companies as they scale across divisions, entities, and geographies. The round comes as enterprise AI shifts from conversational interfaces and experimental pilots toward agentic systems capable of executing actions inside business workflows. Finance is one of the functions most impacted by this transition, where fragmented systems and manual processes directly affect operational efficiency and capital management.

Finance teams at growing companies often operate across disconnected systems including ERPs, bank portals, spreadsheets, and point solutions (single purpose software) that each control a narrow slice of financial operations. While large enterprises deploy complex treasury and finance infrastructure and manage them with large teams, mid-market companies are typically left stitching together fragmented tools as operational complexity increases. As these companies grow and expand internationally, finance teams must manage multiple entities, currencies, bank accounts, and vendor networks while maintaining compliance and reporting accuracy. Tasks such as invoice processing, cross-border payments, and reconciliation frequently require manual intervention and coordination across systems, slowing down financial operations and increasing operational risk.

OpenCFO addresses this challenge by bringing together the three core pillars of financial operations, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, and Treasury, into a unified platform powered by AI agents operating with shared organizational context. The platform connects banking systems, ERPs, and payment infrastructure into a single execution layer where AI agents coordinate financial workflows while keeping humans in control through approvals, policies, and audit trails. Instead of optimizing individual workflows in isolation, OpenCFO’s agents coordinate across the full financial cycle. Actions in payables automatically inform treasury forecasts, receivables data feeds directly into cash positioning, and finance teams gain real-time visibility into liquidity across entities, currencies, and accounts.

"We are not building another dashboard or point solution," said Prudhvi Rao Shedimbi, Co-Founder and CEO of OpenCFO. "CFOs are being asked to operate with greater speed and accuracy than ever, yet the underlying finance stack remains fragmented and manual. Our goal is to build the AI-native execution layer for the CFO office that connects the entire financial stack and enables finance teams to operate with confidence across borders."

OpenCFO is already demonstrating measurable efficiency improvements in early deployments. Invoice processing workflows that typically take multiple days and require manual follow-ups can be automated end-to-end, reducing operational overhead for finance teams across sectors including Cloud/SaaS and Healthcare. One of the earliest areas of impact is cross-border treasury and payment optimization, a hidden cost center for many globally distributed companies. Mid-market businesses today often pay 2 - 4% in foreign exchange fees, rely on slow international settlement rails, and manually reconcile payments across multiple banking systems. OpenCFO integrates multi-currency accounts and global payment rails (via its banking and financial partnerships) to intelligently route payments across both traditional banking and digital rails. Early pilots indicate the platform can deliver more than 50% cost savings on cross-border transactions while enabling near-instant settlement and reconciliation.

"Mid-market CFOs are stuck stitching together fragmented tools that don’t communicate with each other," said Sankalp Singayapally, Co-Founder and COO of OpenCFO. "They pay unnecessary FX fees, wait days for transfers that could settle faster, and spend hours reconciling data across systems. By combining agentic AI with modern treasury infrastructure, we’re building a unified platform that automates financial operations while giving finance teams enhanced visibility and control."

The founding team combines deep engineering experience from CrowdStrike, Confluent, and Bloomberg and the new funding will help expand the team and support OpenCFO’s next phase of product and market expansion. The company plans to onboard senior hires with enterprise treasury deployment expertise, expand its engineering team in both the US and India, accelerate development of accounts payable and receivable automation agents, and scale customer acquisition in priority cross-border corridors including the United States to India, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and Canada. OpenCFO expects to launch its full agentic financial operations platform by mid-2026.

"Mid-market companies with global operations have been underserved," said Sateesh Andra, Managing Partner at Endiya Partners. "Consumer payment tools aren't built for their complexity. Enterprise treasury platforms require scale they don't have. OpenCFO is purpose-built for this segment, starting with optimized cross-border finances and expanding into the full CFO stack. We're backing Prudhvi and Sankalp to build the financial operating system for globally distributed mid-market companies."

Endiya Partners brings deep sector expertise in B2B SaaS and Fintech along with an extensive network across the U.S. and India that will support OpenCFO in talent acquisition, customer development, and strategic partnerships.

About OpenCFO

OpenCFO is a unified AI platform for mid-market CFOs that delivers workflow automation for payables, receivables, and treasury with native integrations into ERPs, and banking/financial infrastructure e.g., multi-currency accounts, global payment/transfer rails. Founded in December 2025 and backed by Endiya Partners, the company operates across the US and India, and serves US-based companies with global operations in India, Europe, Southeast Asia, and other emerging markets. Learn more at https://opencfo.ai/. Please direct all media inquiries to info@opencfo.ai.

About Endiya Partners

Endiya Partners is an early-stage venture capital firm backing India’s most promising product startups across Enterprise, Industrial Tech, and Healthcare. Endiya has built a track record of identifying technical founders building category-defining companies. Notable fintech portfolio companies include Kissht (SEBI-approved IPO) and Qapita (leading cap table and equity management platform in Southeast Asia). The firm combines deep domain expertise with hands-on support in product development, go-to-market strategy, and scaling operations. Endiya is actively investing from its third fund. Learn more at endiya.com.

NTT DATA Signs Strategic Collaboration Agreement with AWS to Accelerate Enterprise Cloud and Agentic AI Adoption

NTT DATA, a global leader in AI, digital business and technology services, today announced a multi-year Strategic Collaboration Agreement (SCA) with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to help enterprises modernize legacy systems, adopt agentic AI responsibly and scale innovation across industries.

Combining NTT DATA’s expertise in cloud transformation, cloud-native modernization and Agentic AI with the scale and innovation velocity of AWS services, the collaboration will deliver tailored enterprise solutions that modernize mission-critical workloads, build secure cloud foundations and drive measurable business outcomes across regulated and high-growth industries.

Under the agreement, NTT DATA and AWS will accelerate enterprise transformation in four priority areas:

• AI-driven large-scale cloud transformation: Accelerating the migration and modernization of on-premises workloads on AWS, leveraging generative and agentic AI, automation and data platforms to unlock new business models and drive intelligent operations.
• Industry cloud solutions on AWS: Delivering modern industry-specific, repeatable offerings across financial services, healthcare, life sciences, public sector, manufacturing, retail and energy, leveraging NTT DATA’s Industry Cloud with 500+ extensible business components and AI agents.
• AI and data innovation for modern managed services and client experiences: Operating secure, compliant cloud environments at scale, including a recent collaboration agreement to modernize contact center solutions on Amazon Connect to accelerate the adoption of AI-driven customer experience (CX) solutions worldwide.
• Digital sovereignty and regulated cloud solutions on AWS European Sovereign Cloud: Enabling European governments and enterprises to meet stringent data residency and operational autonomy requirements. As a launch partner for the AWS European Sovereign Cloud, NTT DATA will deliver sovereign-by-design cloud solutions and managed services that combine regulatory compliance with the same security, availability and performance clients expect from AWS.

AWS will support NTT DATA in running co-innovation programs, certifications and client events, to help enterprises adopt AI driven cloud solutions faster and with greater confidence.

To advance delivery, NTT DATA has formed a dedicated AWS Business Group, aligned with the AWS sales and delivery structure. This group includes close to 11,000 AWS-certified experts, with the objective of certifying nearly 10,000 more experts over the next three years.

"Cloud and AI are central to enterprise transformation," said Abhijit Dubey, President and CEO, NTT DATA, Inc. “Through our Strategic Collaboration Agreement with AWS, we are helping clients move beyond experimentation to scale AI impactfully and responsibly. This collaboration underscores our commitment to deliver secure, industry-specific solutions that create tangible business value for our clients worldwide."

“This collaboration will help more enterprise organizations unlock the potential of the cloud and AI to modernize their operations and accelerate innovation,” said Greg Pearson, VP AWS Global Sales. “Through industry-aligned architecture platforms, AI-driven customer experiences, and support in meeting evolving regulatory requirements through the AWS European Sovereign Cloud, we’re enhancing the ability to transform legacy workloads and build modern digital experiences on AWS.”

Proven success with Honda Trading Asia

Honda Trading Asia successfully migrated to the AWS Cloud with the expert support of NTT DATA.

"Migrating to the AWS Cloud with the expert support of NTT DATA has been an essential step in modernizing our systems and infrastructure and provides us with a powerful foundation for AI innovation. NTT DATA were always available to address our technical questions and worked closely with us to stay within our timeline and budget. Their expertise and support ensured a smooth transition, unlocking exciting growth possibilities through AWS,” said Somya Mayuraskoon, Director, Honda Trading Asia Co., Ltd.

Driving AI innovation across industries

NTT DATA will develop dozens of new industry-specific, AI driven cloud solutions on AWS through its Industry Cloud platform to accelerate digital transformation across regulated and high-growth sectors.

• Financial services: The collaboration will modernize core banking and compliance workloads to reduce risk and ensure regulatory requirements.
• Healthcare and life sciences: With support from AWS, NTT DATA will develop secure, AI-enabled data platforms to deliver intelligent insights from business applications, improving outcomes and accelerating research.
• Public sector: NTT DATA will work with AWS to deliver private cloud solutions that meet compliance requirements and enable secure digital services for citizens.
• Manufacturing and automotive: The collaboration will modernize business and IT operations using generative AI and agentic capabilities, driving improved financial and operational efficiency.

Innovation environments on AWS, including sandboxes and dedicated innovation labs will enable NTT DATA and AWS teams to develop, test and refine these solutions before scaling them for enterprise deployment.

NTT DATA will support these innovations with a full-stack suite of services, from advisory and cloud transformation to implementation and managed services, ensuring clients can adopt AWS technologies with speed, security and confidence. This initiative also expands NTT DATA’s Smart AI AgentTM Ecosystem, helping enterprises deploy and manage responsible, business-driven AI at scale.

About NTT DATA

NTT DATA is a $30+ billion business and technology services leader, serving 75% of the Fortune Global 100. We are committed to accelerating client success and positively impacting society through responsible innovation. We are one of the world’s leading AI and digital infrastructure providers, with unmatched capabilities in enterprise-scale AI, cloud, security, connectivity, data centers and application services. Our consulting and industry solutions help organizations and society move confidently and sustainably into the digital future. As a Global Top Employer, we have experts in more than 70 countries. We also offer clients access to a robust ecosystem of innovation centres as well as established and start-up partners. NTT DATA is part of NTT Group, which invests over $3 billion each year in R&D.