Category Archives: Technology

Advanced Seed Coating Tech Enhances Agricultural Output Significantly

New Delhi, June 18: A new generation of smart seed coating technology is delivering significant improvements in agricultural productivity, with crop yields increasing by up to 30% in field applications, according to recent findings.

The advanced seed treatment involves coating seeds with precision-formulated materials designed to enhance germination rates, improve nutrient uptake, and strengthen resistance to environmental stressors such as drought, pests, and soil variability.

Agricultural experts highlight that the technology supports more efficient resource utilization by reducing dependency on excessive fertilizers and irrigation, while improving overall crop health and consistency. This makes it particularly valuable in regions facing climate variability and soil degradation challenges.

The innovation is expected to benefit farmers by increasing productivity per hectare and lowering input costs, thereby contributing to improved farm incomes and more sustainable agricultural practices.

Industry observers note that such precision agriculture solutions are becoming increasingly important as the sector looks to balance food security needs with environmental sustainability goals.

With successful early adoption, smart seed coating technology is positioned to play a key role in the next phase of agricultural modernization, supporting higher yields and more resilient farming systems.

India’s Exports to BRICS Nations Projected to Reach Dollar 200 Billion by 2030: ASSOCHAM

New Delhi, June 18: India’s exports to BRICS countries are projected to reach around $200 billion by 2030, driven by expanding trade linkages, diversification of export markets, and growing demand across key emerging economies, according to industry body ASSOCHAM.

The report highlights that stronger economic cooperation among BRICS nations—Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa—along with the inclusion of new member countries, is expected to create significant opportunities for Indian exporters in sectors such as engineering goods, pharmaceuticals, textiles, chemicals, and IT-enabled services.

ASSOCHAM noted that India’s competitive manufacturing base, improving logistics infrastructure, and policy support for export promotion are likely to play a crucial role in achieving this growth target over the next decade.

It further stated that rising intra-BRICS trade and efforts to reduce dependency on traditional Western markets could help India diversify its export basket and strengthen its global trade position.

Industry experts believe that strategic trade agreements, supply chain integration, and digital trade facilitation will be key enablers in accelerating export growth to BRICS economies by 2030.

India Sets Global Benchmark in AI Growth and Innovation: Piyush Goyal

June 18: India is positioning itself as a compelling global example in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Union Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal said on Wednesday, highlighting the country’s rapid progress in digital transformation and innovation-led growth.

Speaking at an industry event, the Minister noted that India’s expanding digital ecosystem, strong startup culture, and large talent pool are driving the country’s emergence as a key global hub for AI development and deployment.

He said India’s approach to AI is focused on inclusive growth, real-world applications, and large-scale adoption across sectors such as agriculture, healthcare, education, manufacturing, and governance. According to him, this practical and people-centric model sets India apart in the global AI landscape.

Goyal emphasized that India is not only adopting AI technologies but also building capabilities in innovation, data infrastructure, and skilled manpower to support long-term leadership in the sector. He added that collaboration between industry, academia, and government is playing a crucial role in accelerating AI-driven solutions.

The Minister further stated that India’s digital public infrastructure, including platforms for payments, identity, and governance services, has created a strong foundation for AI integration at scale.

He expressed confidence that India’s continued investment in technology and innovation will further strengthen its position as a global leader in AI and emerging technologies.

AI Upskilling Drives Up to 150 pc Salary Growth in India: Report

New Delhi, June 18: AI-related upskilling is significantly boosting career growth in India, with professionals reporting an average salary increase of up to 150 per cent after acquiring artificial intelligence and emerging technology skills, according to a recent industry report.

The findings highlight a sharp rise in demand for AI, data science, machine learning, and automation skills across sectors such as IT services, fintech, e-commerce, and consulting. Employers are increasingly prioritising candidates with AI competencies as businesses accelerate digital transformation initiatives.

The report indicates that professionals who transition into AI-enabled roles or enhance their existing skill sets with AI tools and technologies are witnessing faster promotions, higher compensation packages, and improved job mobility compared to peers in traditional roles.

Industry experts noted that organisations are actively investing in workforce reskilling programmes to bridge the widening talent gap in advanced technologies. This trend is also being driven by the rapid adoption of generative AI and automation across business operations.

Hiring trends show strong competition for AI-skilled professionals, with companies offering premium salaries to attract and retain talent in high-demand roles. Entry-level and mid-career professionals are particularly benefiting from structured upskilling pathways.

Experts said AI upskilling is becoming a key factor in long-term career sustainability, as industries continue to evolve toward data-driven decision-making and intelligent automation systems.

The report further suggests that India’s large talent pool and growing digital ecosystem position the country as a key global hub for AI-skilled workforce development.

Litera Announces New Cloud AI Automation to Boost Security for Law Firm Communications, Removing Metadata Risk

CHICAGO and LONDON – June 18: Litera, the legal AI platform provider that best unifies the practice and business of law, announced Clean+, the cloud-hosted evolution of Metadact Server. In the practice of law, where speed and volume are constant, every outbound email attachment carries hidden risk. A single missed scrub can expose privileged work, breach client confidence, or trigger a legal ethics inquiry. Clean+ (formerly Metadact Server) delivers server-grade metadata protection across every Outlook environment, on infrastructure Litera manages, with no server for IT to provision, patch, or maintain. 

“The practice of law runs on trust, and hidden document data breaks it,” said Joey Benedek, Senior Vice President of Product Management at Litera. “As AI accelerates how lawyers draft and collaborate, the volume of outbound documents is climbing and so is the risk. Clean+ gives IT leaders the server-class protection their firm depends on without the infrastructure burden that has always come with it.” 

As AI generates more documents faster, the volume of outbound documents is climbing while IT teams are asked to do more with less. Probabilistic AI tools cannot be trusted to decide what metadata stays and what gets stripped.

Litera addresses this with a fully hosted service that routes attachments through the Litera server, enforcing one policy across classic Outlook, new Outlook, Outlook for Mac, Outlook for Web, and mobile — with no server to provision, patch, or maintain. Clean+ is built on a deterministic, rules-based engine refined over 30 years and trusted by 42% of the market (ILTA Tech Survey, 2025). No AI-first entrant can replicate that foundation, and when metadata mistakes are eliminated at the source, lawyers send legal advice with confidence and clients receive work that reflects the firm’s standard.

Clean+ is part of a broader consolidation of the Metadact line under the Clean brand, giving firms a clear tier of protection for every deployment model: Clean Desktop (formerly Metadact Desktop), Clean Cloud (formerly Metadact in Litera One), Clean Server (formerly Metadact Server), and Clean+ (formerly Metadact Server in Litera One). It is available as a standalone package and included in Draft Advanced, the company’s end-to-end AI drafting suite. Existing Metadact Server customers will receive dedicated migration support. General availability is June 30.

Industrial Ethernet in eight of ten new nodes – Fieldbus decline accelerates according to HMS Networks’ annual analysis

Halmstad, Sweden, June 18: HMS Networks has released its annual analysis of the industrial network market, marking twelve consecutive years of tracking how factories and machine builders connect their automation systems. The 2026 study shows that the long-running shift from traditional fieldbus technologies to Industrial Ethernet has continued through another full year, with Industrial Ethernet now accounting for 79% of newly installed nodes worldwide, up from 76% in 2025 and just 34% when HMS first began publishing these figures in 2015.
 

• PROFINET strengthens its lead at 30% (up from 27%)
• EtherNet/IP follows at 25% (up from 23%)
• EtherCAT continues a strong trajectory at 20% (up from 17%)
• Modbus TCP holds steady at 5%
• CC-Link IE remains stable at 3%
• POWERLINK declines to 1% (from 3%)
• Other Ethernet protocols account for the remaining 2% as market consolidation around the major networks continues

• PROFIBUS remains the largest fieldbus but drops to 4% (from 5%)
• Modbus RTU holds steady at 3%, reflecting its continued role as the universal low-cost serial protocol
• CC-Link, DeviceNet and CAN/CANopen each remain in the 1–2% range with modest further decline
• Other Fieldbus protocols collectively account for 2%, down from 4%, as the long tail of legacy networks fades

Apple May Hike Product Prices Amid Rising Memory and Storage Costs: Tim Cook

New Delhi, June 18: Apple may increase the prices of its devices in the coming period as global costs of memory and storage components continue to rise, Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook has indicated.

The company said that persistent cost pressures in semiconductor supply chains are impacting key input materials used across its product range, including smartphones, laptops, tablets, and other connected devices. Memory and storage chips, which are essential components in modern consumer electronics, have seen notable price increases due to supply constraints and rising global demand.

Apple stated that while it continues to focus on supply chain optimisation, operational efficiency, and long-term vendor partnerships, sustained increases in component prices may eventually be reflected in retail pricing.

Industry experts note that the development highlights broader inflationary pressures within the global electronics manufacturing ecosystem, particularly in segments dependent on advanced chip technologies. The trend could potentially influence pricing strategies across multiple technology companies beyond Apple.

Analysts also suggest that strong demand for high-performance devices, coupled with constrained supply in certain semiconductor categories, is contributing to upward cost pressure across the sector.

The company has not announced any immediate changes to product pricing but acknowledged that adjustments may be considered if current cost trends persist in the global supply chain environment.

MENA Fintech Association and FINTECH.TV Forge Strategic Global Media Alliance to Amplify Fintech Leadership, Shape Industry Dialogue, and Connect Innovation Across Global Markets

Dubai, UAE – June 18 – The MENA Fintech Association (MFTA), the leading not-for-profit fintech ecosystem enabler and industry advocacy platform across the Middle East and Africa, announced a strategic collaboration with Fintech.TV, the premier global media platform dedicated to financial innovation, capital markets, fintech, digital assets, and the future of finance.

The partnership will establish a dedicated series of high-impact on-air discussions, executive interviews, thought leadership programs, and ecosystem-focused broadcasts featuring global policymakers, regulators, financial institutions, fintech founders, investors, technology innovators, and industry leaders.

Powered by the MENA Fintech Association and amplified through Fintech.TV’s international media reach, the initiative aims to showcase the rapid evolution of the UAE and broader MENA fintech landscape while facilitating meaningful dialogue around the future of financial services, innovation, regulation, and digital transformation.

“The future of fintech will be shaped by those who lead global conversations, not simply participate in them. Through the MENA Fintech Association’s partnership with FINTECH.TV, we are creating a powerful international platform that positions the MENA region at the center of financial innovation, policy dialogue, and industry leadership – connecting regional excellence with global influence.”

– Nameer Khan, Chairman, MENA Fintech Association

The MENA region is rapidly becoming a global hub for fintech innovation, entrepreneurship, and investment. At FINTECH.TV, we are excited to partner with the MENA Fintech Association to spotlight the leaders and ideas transforming the industry. By combining MFTA’s ecosystem leadership with FINTECH.TV’s international media platform, we will deliver impactful conversations, amplify regional innovation, and connect the MENA fintech community with audiences around the world.

Troy McGuire Co-Founder and Global Head of Content and Operations, FINTECH.TV

Airrived Named Gartner Emerging Tech AI Vendor for Transforming Autonomous Security Operations with Agentic AI

DUBLIN, Calif.– Airrived, the company behind the Agentic OS, today announced it has been named by Gartner as an Emerging Tech AI Vendor in its “Emerging Tech: AI Vendor Race: Most Prominent Use Cases in Agentic AI by Industry” report (June 5, 2026). This recognition follows Airrived’s recent distinction as a twice-named Gartner Tech Innovator in Agentic AI.

Airrived was spotlighted for its Agentic OS, which enables enterprises to deploy, scale, and manage custom AI agents—positioning the company as a leader in domain-specialized agentic AI for enterprise security, IT, and business operations.

The Gartner report highlights Airrived in the use-case insight, “AI Agents Proactively Remediate IT and Security Issues to Improve Enterprise Security Posture.” The report details a case study of a global enterprise that faced mounting operational challenges across its security operations center (SOC), security engineering, and compliance functions due to disconnected tools, manual investigations, and repetitive tasks.

To overcome these hurdles and a lack of specialized AI expertise, the organization deployed Airrived’s modular, agentic AI platform. The solution unified the analyst experience by enabling conversational support across disparate systems like Splunk and CrowdStrike, while integrating prebuilt AI agents to autonomously handle incident triage, gather evidence, and execute audit questionnaires.

According to the report, “The deployment transformed operations by autonomously handling 90% of SOC alert triage and investigation activities, reducing mean time to respond (MTTR) by 80%, and automating post-incident reporting. AI agents continuously gathered and correlated evidence across security products, improving analyst productivity by 90% while significantly accelerating audit readiness. The AI-driven self-service portal also reduced security engineering ticket volume by 50%, eliminating multiday response delays. As a result, security professionals became creators of AI agents, enabling autonomous operations, scaling expertise, automating decisions, speeding compliance, and focusing on strategic risk reduction over manual tasks.”

“Being recognized by Gartner validates where the market is heading rather than a destination – from AI experimentation to true autonomous operations at scale – a massive market transformation,” said Anurag Gurtu, Co-Founder and CEO of Airrived. “Our mission is to help organizations transition from AI-assisted workflows to fully autonomous operations while maintaining governance, security, and trust.”

A Different Kind of Foundation

While much of the market remains fixated on copilots, wrappers, and orchestration layers dressed up as intelligence, Airrived is building something categorically different: the Agentic OS — a new foundational layer for the enterprise that doesn’t just assist, but executes, adapts, governs, and scales.

The Agentic OS combines fine-tuned domain models, deep reasoning, multi-agent orchestration, and policy-driven control into a single governed infrastructure. It transforms autonomous AI from experimental capability into trusted, production-grade operation. Others are enabling AI to act.

Airrived is defining how AI can be trusted to act.

At the center of this vision is AetherClaw — Airrived’s flagship security capability and the clearest expression of its mission: autonomous systems that operate across every domain of the enterprise, governed by design, and trusted by default.

Already in Production

Months after emerging from stealth in February 2026, Airrived is not a promise — it is a platform. The company is already deployed in production at some of the world’s most demanding enterprises:

• Airrived and Wisdom Technology launched Qatar sovereign cloud with Agentic AI, powering secure, intelligent operations for energy, government, and financial institutions.

• A Fortune 150 insurance company, running high-volume, mission-critical agentic workflows at enterprise scale.A global bank, with governed autonomous agents operating across regulated financial environments.

• One of the largest fast-casual restaurant chains in the world, deploying operational intelligence at scale.

• A major telecom infrastructure provider, running autonomous operations across complex, high-availability infrastructure.

These deployments are not pilots. They are proof that governed, reliable, scalable agentic intelligence is not a future capability — it is a present one.

Industry Recognition

Since emerging from stealth, Airrived has earned major recognition: 2x Gartner Tech Innovator in Agentic AI • Inc. Best Workplaces • Globee Pioneers Award “Best of Category” in AI-Powered App Development Disruptors • Cybersecurity Excellence Award, Agentic AI Platform (highest votes) • Global InfoSec Award, Most Advanced in Agentic AI • Security Today CyberSecured Award • BIG Innovator in Agentic AI • 2026 AI Excellence Award, Business Intelligence Group.

These honors are not accolades collected at a distance. They are independent validation that Airrived is delivering what the industry has long demanded: agentic AI that enterprises can actually trust.

What Comes Next

Gartner’s report makes clear that the urgent imperative for enterprises is to move beyond single-task AI toward multi-agent systems capable of orchestrating complex, cross-domain workflows at scale. The question is no longer whether agentic AI will transform the enterprise. The question is who will build the infrastructure that makes it safe to do so.

Airrived has answered that question.

Bridge Conference closes its second edition with startups shortlisted for investment talks as Jukebox Ventures joins as partner

200 delegates from the music, tech and startup worlds gathered at Petram Resort & Residences in Umag, Croatia, last month.

The second edition of Bridge Conference brought 200 delegates from the music, technology, startup, tourism and creative industries to Croatia’s Istrian coast for three days of programming, closing with a tangible result: of more than 50 startups that pitched during the conference’s accelerator programme, 11 have been shortlisted by lead partner Jukebox Ventures for further talks and potential investment.

This year’s edition was held in partnership with Jukebox Ventures, the music-focused startup accelerator and investment platform.

“I came back so inspired, there was so much talent in the room,” said Alex Jukes, Founder and CEO of Jukebox Ventures. “We’ve really built something special there for the first year of doing it as Jukebox Ventures… we’ve found 11 projects that we wanna continue further talking to and hopefully, invest further into.”

 
The programme drew senior figures from across the live and recorded music business, including Maria May (Head of Electronic, Creative Artists Agency) and Steve Hogan (Agent & Partner, WME), who opened the second day with a keynote on electronic music’s rise from underground scenes to global stages. Further sessions brought together leaders from Sziget, Boom Festival, Yourope, Sony Music Latin-Iberia, Pollstar and the International Live Music Conference.

Artificial intelligence ran throughout the programme – from “Ticketing 2.0: How AI is Revolutionizing the Ticket Journey” to “The Human Edge: Why Belonging Beats Engagement in the Age of AI,” which weighed technology’s reach against the value of authentic human connection. Other panels tackled the financial realities of building events, data-led artist development, music tourism, women’s leadership across the industry, and sustainability.

“When we launched Bridge, we hoped to create a place where the future of the industry could be shaped through real human connections,” said Dušan Kovačević, Founder and CEO of EXIT Festival Group. “This year, seeing startups pitch their ideas, investors discover new opportunities and industry leaders begin new conversations showed us that the future is already being built here.”

Held overlooking the Adriatic, the conference paired high-level sessions with networking events, gala dinners, sunset meetups and its signature La Dolce Vita evenings. Jennifer Cochrane (CEO, Getahead; Booker, EXIT Festival Group) called this year’s edition “nothing short of outstanding,” adding the team is “already looking forward to what next year will bring.”