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Binance CEO becomes one of the world’s richest billionaires

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A cryptocurrency CEO has become one of the richest people on Earth, CNN reported.

Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, who runs the crypto exchange Binance, has joined the ranks of the world’s top billionaires, with an estimated net worth of at least $96.5 billion, according to new calculations from the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Zhao’s projected fortune now is just below that of Oracle founder Larry Ellison and surpasses that of Mukesh Ambani, the Indian tycoon whose fortune has also soared over the last two years.

The ascent of the Chinese-Canadian entrepreneur is emblematic of the rapid creation of wealth in the fast-moving world of digital currencies.

Last year, other crypto founders also enjoyed huge gains as the value of virtual coins rallied, with ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin and Coinbase founder Brian Armstrong both becoming billionaires.

Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of FTX, another cryptocurrency exchange that has been backed by Binance, pointed Tuesday to an “unprecedented amount of wealth creation that has occurred in the industry over the last few years”, CNN reported.

A Binance spokesperson told CNN Business that “CZ intends to give away most of his wealth, even 99 per cent of his wealth, just like other entrepreneurs and founders.”

Zhao launched Binance in 2017, gradually building it into one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges, the report said.

Business

AI to generate new revenue streams in 2025, innovate business processes: Experts

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New Delhi, Dec 25: Enterprises will reimagine business processes and value streams with AI agents in 2025, while taking into consideration the practical and ethical challenges, industry experts have said, adding that it will be the year of small language models, scaled reasoning and business value realisation.

In the coming year, AI agents will generate new revenue streams, innovate business processes across industries, boosting profitability, operational efficiency, and customer experience.

“Humans will increasingly take on roles where they set up agentic teams, plan agentic workflows, and validate work done by AI Agents,” said Sandhya Arun, Chief Technology Officer, Wipro.

According to Mohammed Rafee Tarafdar, CTO of Infosys, in 2025, we will see a lot of AI initiatives that are currently under rollout, to be scaled across enterprises, and businesses will start realising some measurable business value along the lines of cost, growth, better experience, and risk protection.

“We are seeing increased investments in scaling inferencing which improves the reasoning capabilities, thereby enabling the agentic systems to be used to eliminate tasks and re-engineer the processes,” Tarafdar mentioned.

As the small language models become more specialised and can deliver higher accuracy at lower cost, the adoption of these models in enterprises is likely to accelerate.

Prativa Mohapatra, Vice President and Managing Director, Adobe India, said that fuelled by a healthy enterprise business, vibrant creator community, and upcoming technological advancements, 2025 represents a year of extraordinary opportunity.

“We are committed to leading the way in harnessing generative AI’s potential responsibly and empower businesses and creators alike, setting new benchmarks in personalised customer experiences and content creation while upholding trust and transparency through our content authenticity programmes,” she noted.

The idea of software-defined capabilities, which originated with cloud technology, has now evolved across various machines like vehicles and robots.

“In 2025, software defined machines will be powered by AI and ML and make informed decisions. We will witness an increase in autonomous machines with over-the-air (OTA) updates,” added Arun.

Autonomous industrial robots will proliferate, and software-defined medical devices will evolve towards autonomous preventive maintenance and self-healing with minimal human intervention and down time.

Augmented analytics will enable citizen users to gain access to intelligent insights from ready-to-use data visualisations for faster and informed decision making. Data marketplaces will grow across industries and industry ecosystems to unlock new revenue streams, said experts.

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Indian firms raise bumper funds from equity market in 2024, set new records

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Mumbai, Dec 24: The year 2024 has been a historic one for the Indian stock market. Corporates raised bumper funds from investors through initial public offerings (IPOs), follow-on public offers (FPOs), qualified institutional placements (QIPs) and rights issues, and set several new records.

In 2024, domestic companies raised Rs 1.64 lakh crore through 90 IPOs.

During this period, shares worth Rs 1.39 lakh crore were sold to institutional investors. This is the highest figure ever for raising capital through public issues.

In 2021, companies raised the highest amount of Rs 1.18 lakh crore through IPOs. During this period, shares worth Rs 41,997 crore were sold by the companies to institutional investors.

So far this year, 20 companies have raised about Rs 18,000 crore through rights issues. Last year this figure was Rs 7,266 crore, and in 2022, it was Rs 3,884 crore.

Due to the boom in the IPO market, in December 2024, about 15 companies are going to raise Rs 25,500 crore through public issues.

The biggest-ever IPO of the Indian stock market was launched by Hyundai Motor India. Its issue size was Rs 27,870 crore.

Earlier, LIC’s public issue of Rs 21,008 crore in 2022 was the biggest IPO in the country so far. In 2024, Vibhor Steel Tube’s IPO received the highest subscription of 320 times. Apart from this, IPOs like KRN Heat Exchanger & Refrigeration, Manba Finance, and Gala Precision Engineering got more than 200 times subscriptions.

Indian firms raised Rs 1.4 lakh crore this year through QIPs, the highest figure so far since 2020.

This year, Vedanta and Zomato have each raised Rs 8,500 crore through QIP. Apart from this, Adani Energy Solutions and Varun Beverage raised Rs 8,373 crore and Rs 7,500 crore, respectively. According to data from the National Securities Depository Ltd (NSDL), foreign investors invested around $14 billion in the primary markets this year, which is more than the previous record of 2021.

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Business

‘What Is The Hack?’: X User Raises Questions Over Uber’s Differential Pricing On iPhones & Android

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Cab-aggregator services have become an integral part of commute in many urban centres in India. Uber is one of the biggest names in the business, not just in India but globally.

In a story that surrounds the functioning of the application, one user took to X, to notify a peculiar observation.

While many have anecdotally mentioned a pattern of distinction in the pricing of the services, depending the device in use, this apparent differential phenomenon was highlighted by an X user who noticed the same.

Different Phones, Different Prices

The user who goes by the name SUDHIR, with the handle @seriousfunnyguy took to X with a photograph of two phones. The phones in the photograph had the Uber open. In the app, the user was in the process of booking a ride.

As one book a ride, the app shows different modes and options along with their respective pricing. In this, on one phone, which is an Android phone, the price is lower than the price for the same distance, on an iPhone. The rides were also booked at the same time.

The indignant user added, “Same pickup point, destination & time but 2 different phones get 2 different rates. It happens with me as I always get higher rates on my Uber as compared to my daughter’s phone. So most of the time, I request her to book my Uber. Does this happen with you also? What is the hack?”

Different Pricing Across Modes

In this, the pricing on the Android phone is shown to be lower than the prices on the Apple iPhones for all options, including Uber Auto, Uber Go, Go Sedan and Uber XL.

In the first option, there is a gap of over Rs 42. With Uber Go, there is a difference that is even greater at over Rs 120. For the Uber Go Sedan, the difference is over Rs 65. In addition, the price for Uber XL is close to Rs 100.

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