Category Archives: Technology

Google Breaks Ground on India AI Hub, Launching a National Industrial Ecosystem Alongside India’s Digital Infrastructure Milestone

April 28: Today, Google officially broke ground on its landmark AI hub in Visakhapatnam (Vizag), Andhra Pradesh. This marks the start of construction on the company’s largest investment in India’s digital future to date, as well as reinforces Google’s commitment to being a long-term partner and catalyst for India’s economic and environmental resilience.

The groundbreaking ceremony, celebrated together with AdaniConneX and Nxtra by Airtel, took place at Tarluvada, Andhra Pradesh, with key dignitaries: Shri Ashwini Vaishnaw, Minister for Railways, Information & Broadcasting and Electronics & Information Technology, Government of India; Shri Nara Chandrababu Naidu, Hon’ble Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh; Shri Nara Lokesh, Hon’ble Minister for Information Technology, Electronics and Communications, RTG and HRD, Government of Andhra Pradesh; Shri Bikash Koley, Vice President, Google Cloud; Shri Karan Adani, Director, Adani Group; Shri Jeet Adani, Director, Adani Group; and Shri Rakesh Mittal, Vice Chairman, Bharti Enterprises.

From L to R

• Shri. Nara Lokesh – Minister for HRD ITC&E and RTG, Government of Andhra Pradesh
• Shri. Jeet Adani Garu – Chairperson of Adani Group
• Shri. Karan Adani – Managing Director of Adani Ports & SEZ
• Shri. Ashwini Vaishnaw Sir – Hon’ble Union Minister for Railways, Information & Broadcasting, Electronics and Information Technology, Govt. of India
• Shri. Nara Chandrababu Naidu – Hon’ble Chief Minister, Government of Andhra Pradesh
• Smt. Laura Williams Garu – U.S. Consulate General
• Shri. Bikash Koley Garu – Vice President of Google Global Infrastructure, Google Cloud
• Shri. Rakesh Mittal Garu – Vice-Chairman, Bharti Enterprises

Shri Ashwini Vaishnaw, Hon’ble IT Minister, Government of India:

“The groundbreaking ceremony of India AI Hub in Visakhapatnam reflects Hon’ble Prime Minister Narendra Modi Ji’s vision of making India a global leader in technology. Thanks to the support and commitment of Hon’ble Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, N. Chandrababu Naidu Ji, in realising this vision.The India AI

Hub and three subsea cables landing in Visakhapatnam will become very important infrastructure for the country’s journey forward.

Thank you Google for your continued trust in India.”

Shri N. Chandrababu Naidu, Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh: 

“Andhra Pradesh is emerging as India’s premier investment destination, powered by speed, trust, and ease of doing business. Google’s AI hub in Visakhapatnam will be a cornerstone of our growing tech corridor, driving innovation, creating high-value opportunities for our youth, and strengthening our position in the global digital economy. Our vision goes beyond attracting investment – we want local talent, startups, and enterprises to become active partners in this technology-driven growth story. With the strong support of the Central Government and in line with the vision of a developed India, this partnership with Google reflects our commitment to combining cutting-edge innovation with inclusive growth, ensuring opportunities reach every community across Andhra Pradesh.”

Thomas Kurian, CEO, Google Cloud: 

“Today’s groundbreaking is a powerful realization of our shared vision with the Indian government, and an inflection point for the country’s AI-native future. Together we are laying the foundation for Viksit Bharat, and opening new doors for economic opportunity nationwide. The Google AI hub will serve as a catalyst for growth built on deep community partnerships.”

Jeet Adani, Director, Adani Group: 

“India’s AI moment will be defined by infrastructure. What we are building in Visakhapatnam, nearly 1 GW in a single location, signals that shift. When energy becomes more affordable and increasingly powered by clean sources, intelligence becomes more accessible and that is how India will lead the next phase of digital growth.”

Gopal Vittal, Executive Vice Chairman, Bharti Airtel:

“Through our strategic partnership with Google and Adani to build this landmark AI hub, we will help advance India’s digital ambitions. With Visakhapatnam emerging as a new hub on the world’s AI map, we will ensure that India sets the pace for innovation, and sustainable growth, not just for our people, but for the whole world. Our full stack of best-in-class data centers, use of green power, pan-India ultra-low latency fiber and a next-gen cable landing station will enable large-scale, world-class AI infrastructure in Vizag.”

A US$15 Billion Blueprint for “Viksit Bharat”

Today’s groundbreaking marks a significant milestone in Google’s  $15 billion investment over five years (2026-2030) to establish a comprehensive AI ecosystem in India, designed to be an important contributor to the government’s Viksit Bharat 2047 vision.

First announced in October 2025, this project includes India’s first gigawatt-scale AI hub comprising three data center campuses. AdaniConnex and Nxtra by Airtel will lead the construction of the data center buildings and connecting infrastructure, enabling Google to deploy advanced AI capabilities and scale digital services across India.

The AI hub also comprises the America-India Connect initiative for an expanded fiber-optic network; and a long-term clean energy strategy that prioritizes bringing new clean energy supply to the electricity grid, accelerating India’s national goal of reaching 500 GW of non-fossil fuel capacity by 2030.

The AI hub will deliver the high-performance, low-latency services that businesses and organizations need to build and scale their own AI-powered solutions, accelerate research and development, and ultimately help India secure its place as a global leader in the AI-driven future.

Driving Multi-Generational Impact and Community Resilience

Beyond technical and industrial significance, the Google India AI hub represents a long-term investment in local job training, community projects, and the responsible stewardship of shared resources.

Everywhere it operates, Google takes a community-first approach that translates global investment into local opportunity. In Vizag, Google conducted a thorough community

impact assessment based on community consultations to guide its investments well before beginning construction.

Today, Google announced a comprehensive set of community development initiatives to protect natural resources and economic security in Visakhapatnam:

• Securing Water Futures: In line with its commitment to water stewardship, Google is partnering with Sponge Collaborative to launch an integrated watershed management and community empowerment plan that addresses existing hydrological stress and coastal ecosystem sensitivities around its data center campuses. This will also link watershed restoration with community needs such as integrating clean drinking water systems like reverse osmosis plants and ‘Water ATMs,’ while enhancing resilient livelihood opportunities in local agriculture and fisheries.

• Modernizing Maritime Trades: Integrating traditional maritime practices into the digital economy is a vital step toward long-term economic security for coastal residents. Through a strategic partnership with the Sambhav Foundation, Google is launching a program to equip over 1,000 individuals from the fishing community with GPS navigation and weather-forecasting applications to enhance safety and operational efficiency, and provide training in cold-chain management and value-added processing. The program also aims to bridge the digital divide by facilitating

UPI-based financial literacy and streamlining enrollment in marine welfare schemes.

• Empowering Grassroots Innovation: Working with ChangeX, the Google Udaan India Fund provides direct grants to local schools and social enterprises to advance community projects in the Visakhapatnam Metropolitan Region. These projects include AI-led skilling labs, digital literacy programs, local entrepreneurship, and climate-focused interventions.

• Scaling Women-Led Enterprises: In collaboration with the Learning Links Foundation, Google is introducing the NARI Shakti program to support women from low-income backgrounds in building sustainable livelihoods and achieving long-term financial self-reliance. This incubator program focuses on transitioning home-based work into a stable source of income for 10,000+ existing and aspiring entrepreneurs. By providing targeted training in financial literacy, business planning, and digital tools, the initiative equips participants with the essential resources needed to successfully establish and grow their own micro-enterprises.

• Building a Future-Ready Workforce: As Visakhapatnam grows into a major digital hub, Google is introducing the Skills Trade and Readiness (STAR) program to create sustainable career paths for local talent while developing a homegrown workforce ready to drive India’s digital acceleration. With hands-on training in high-demand fields like construction, welding, and facility operations, the program aims to prepare more than 1,000 people in the local workforce for vital roles in developing the city’s digital infrastructure. To support long-term career success, the initiative integrates employability coaching and an AI Literacy Mission. In tandem, Google is partnering with ICT Academy to train 1,200+ local students and educators to gain access to specialized tracks in cloud computing and generative AI.

As development of the Google India AI hub progresses, these and other new community-centric programs will continue to scale in direct response to evolving regional needs. This commitment ensures localized investments transcend immediate infrastructure requirements to drive sustainable, generational impact across Andhra Pradesh.

Building India’s AI Industrial Corridor: The Bharat AI Shakti Conclave

The groundbreaking ceremony was accompanied by the Bharat AI Shakti Conclave, a first-of-its-kind conference organized in strategic partnership with the Government of Andhra Pradesh and the Hon’ble Minister Shri Nara Lokesh. The Conclave served as a unique platform for convening suppliers, industry partners, and infrastructure stakeholders to explore how to translate and accelerate Google’s anchor investment into a tangible economic value chain for the region.

Themed ‘Collaborating to Deliver India’s AI Corridor,’ the Conclave reflects a deliberate industrial strategy: Google’s investment in Visakhapatnam is designed not only to build world-class infrastructure, but to catalyze a broader technology ecosystem that multiplies the benefits to the local economy. From prioritizing a local-first procurement approach for vital infrastructure activities, to integrating local small and medium enterprises (SMEs) under Google’s global safety and operational frameworks, the project aims to facilitate capacity building and effectively raise the competitiveness of regional industry players for future large-scale infrastructure work.

AVer Unveils Next-Generation Matrix Tracking Box, Redefining Simplicity in Multi-Camera Production for High-Impact Venues

Taipei, Taiwan – Apr 28: AVer Information Inc., an award-winning provider of AI audio-video solutions, announces the MT500 Matrix Tracking Box, designed as the successor to the industry-favorite MT300 to empower venues like large lecture halls, government chambers, and corporate boardrooms to manage multi-camera setups effortlessly. With native Dante AV-H1 and NDI® support2, the MT500 removes the “cable mess” of traditional Pro AV, allowing high-quality video and audio to travel over a single standard network cable. Besides, the MT500 delivers dual 4K video outputs for simultaneous lecture capture and in-room display alongside hassle-free AI features. This new addition to AVer’s line of Matrix Tracking Boxes is a remarkable all-in-one device that delivers seamless, high-impact communication.

Multi-Camera Tracking and Switching for Higher Engagement

With built-in PTZ Link Premium, the MT500 connects AVer cameras to 8 world-leading microphone brands together to create synchronized Voice Tracking while intelligently switching between diverse camera angles based on voice location, always providing the best angle of the active speaker. It employs AI algorithms to understand the “flow” of a conversation, switching angles naturally to maintain visual interest.

AI-Driven Automation for Minimized Manual Effort

The MT500 incorporates a suite of AI features to ensure a clear and professional visual experience for every participant. By automating focus, switching, and configuration, FaceFocus, IntelliSwitch, and InstaConfig3 provide zero-touch multi-camera adjustments. Together, these innovations strengthen operational efficiency by eliminating manual technical setups and reducing the configuration time required for complex hybrid environments.

Key Benefits at a Glance

The MT500 Matrix Tracking Box redefines how organizations approach multi-camera environments by prioritizing ease of use and professional results. Key benefits include:

• Operational Efficiency: Eliminates the need for a dedicated human operator through fully automated AI tracking and switching.
• Versatile Distribution: Serves two audiences at once with dual-output streams for simultaneous in-room and remote viewing.
• Seamless Integration: Reduces technical overhead by unifying NDI®, Dante®, and local audio mixing into a single, compact hub.
• Optimal Visual Engagement: Ensures remote participants feel included with broadcast-quality, and the most professional angle of every speaker.
• Long-Term Peace of Mind: Drives higher student retention and stronger corporate alignment backed by AVer’s industry-leading 5-year warranty.

Google Cloud AI Hub Launched in Visakhapatnam to Boost India’s AI Push

Visakhapatnam, Apr 28 (BNP): Union Electronics and IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw attended the groundbreaking ceremony of the Google Cloud India AI Hub in Visakhapatnam on Monday, marking a major milestone in India’s expanding digital infrastructure ecosystem.

The new facility, being developed by Google, is expected to strengthen artificial intelligence capabilities, cloud computing infrastructure, and data-driven innovation in the country.

Speaking at the event, Vaishnaw highlighted India’s growing digital transformation journey and compared Visakhapatnam’s emerging role in AI to Hyderabad’s evolution into a global IT hub. He noted that just as Cyberabad became synonymous with India’s IT services growth, Visakhapatnam could evolve into a major AI centre in the future.

He described the city’s development trajectory as a significant step toward building a strong “AI and data hub ecosystem” in India, supported by advanced infrastructure and global technology partnerships.

Officials said the AI hub is expected to boost investment in high-end technology infrastructure, create new employment opportunities, and support innovation across sectors such as cloud services, artificial intelligence, and digital platforms.

The initiative is also seen as part of India’s broader strategy to position itself as a global leader in emerging technologies and strengthen its digital economy under the vision of expanding AI-driven growth across major cities.

OptOps AI Delivers Massive Kubernetes Savings with Zero Production Risk

Gurugram, Aprl 28: OptOps.ai today announced the official launch of its autonomous Kubernetes cost and performance intelligence platform, designed to help enterprises reduce cloud waste while maintaining full control and zero production risk.

As Kubernetes adoption continues to grow globally—powering a majority of production containers—enterprises are facing rising cloud costs, with a significant portion attributed to inefficiencies and over-provisioning. OptOps addresses this challenge by combining real-time AI analysis with a safety-first, advisory-driven optimization model.

Redefining Cloud Cost Optimization

Unlike traditional FinOps tools that provide retrospective insights or require deep infrastructure access, OptOps delivers:

• Real-time detection of cost leakages
• Actionable optimization recommendations
• Single-click automation with full user control

The platform ensures that organizations can optimize infrastructure without compromising stability or security.

Leadership Commentary

Prince Khanna, CEO of OptOps.ai, said:

“Enterprises today are forced to choose between visibility and control when it comes to cloud optimization. With OptOps, we are redefining that equation by combining AI-driven intelligence with a safety-first approach, enabling real-time cost optimization without compromising stability.”

Ashutosh Dubey, Co-Founder & CTO, added:

“Cloud waste is not just a cost issue—it’s a visibility and intelligence gap. Our platform empowers engineering teams with actionable insights to eliminate inefficiencies while retaining full control over their systems.”

Advanced Architecture for Enterprise Needs

OptOps is built on a lightweight four-layer architecture, including:

• A deployable in-cluster read-only agent (under five minutes)
• An ML-driven optimization engine
• An advisory-first action layer
• An executive dashboard for DevOps and business teams

The platform operates without accessing sensitive data or impacting production workloads, ensuring zero production risk.

Driving Efficiency and ROI

Key capabilities include:

• Real-time anomaly detection
• Pod rightsizing and node-level optimization
• Automated insights to reduce manual intervention
• Rapid ROI, often within the first week of deployment

By eliminating the need for constant monitoring and manual tuning, OptOps enables teams to focus on innovation while improving infrastructure efficiency.

A New Era in DevOps & FinOps

With a value-based pricing model aligned to customer savings, OptOps.ai positions itself at the forefront of next-generation cloud management where automation, intelligence, and trust are critical to scaling modern infrastructure.

Odisha Launches SITI ODISHA Think Tank for Data Driven Growth

Bhubaneswar, Apr 28 (BNP): Odisha has taken a significant step towards strengthening innovation-led governance with the launch of SITI-ODISHA, a new think tank aimed at improving policy formulation, research, and data-driven decision-making.

The initiative marks a new phase in the state’s development strategy focused on innovation, collaboration, and the use of technology to enhance governance outcomes.

SITI-ODISHA is expected to function as a key knowledge and research hub, supporting evidence-based policymaking across sectors. It will also help bridge the gap between research, implementation, and public policy by bringing together experts, institutions, and stakeholders.

Key Objectives

The think tank is designed to:

ଓଡ଼ିଶାରେ ନବଚିନ୍ତନ ଓ ନବସୃଜନ କ୍ଷେତ୍ରରେ ଏକ ନୂତନ ଅଧ୍ୟାୟର ଶୁଭାରମ୍ଭ ହୋଇଛି। SITI-ODISHA ଏକ ପ୍ରମୁଖ ‘ଥିଙ୍କ୍-ଟ୍ୟାଙ୍କ୍’ ଭାବେ ନୀତି ପ୍ରଣୟନ, ଗବେଷଣା ଏବଂ ତଥ୍ୟଭିତ୍ତିକ ନିଷ୍ପତ୍ତି ଗ୍ରହଣ ପ୍ରକ୍ରିୟାକୁ ସୁଦୃଢ଼ କରିବ । ‘ଭିଜନ ୨୦୩୬’ ଏବଂ ‘ବିକଶିତ ଭାରତ @୨୦୪୭’ର ଲକ୍ଷ୍ୟକୁ ସମନ୍ୱିତ କରି ସହଭାଗିତା ଓ ପ୍ରଯୁକ୍ତି ବିଦ୍ୟାର… pic.twitter.com/QPRslDhdEe

— Mohan Charan Majhi (@MohanMOdisha) April 27, 2026

• Strengthen data-driven decision-making in governance
• Promote research and policy innovation
• Encourage collaboration between government, academia, and industry
• Support long-term planning aligned with development goals

Officials said the initiative aligns with Vision 2036 and Viksit Bharat @2047, ensuring that Odisha’s growth strategy remains future-ready and globally competitive.

By integrating technology and participatory governance, SITI-ODISHA aims to accelerate the state’s development journey and improve the efficiency of policy outcomes across sectors such as education, health, industry, and infrastructure.

The launch reflects Odisha’s broader push to position itself as a hub for innovation, research, and sustainable development in the coming decades.

TriFetch comes out of stealth to automate the administrative work that slows specialty clinics

TriFetch is building an end-to-end automation layer for independent specialty clinics, covering patient calls and scheduling, referral processing, and prior authorizations. The company is running active pilots across California and aims to help clinics reduce administrative burden so staff can spend more time on care.

San Francisco, CA – Apr 28; In a specialty clinic, the phone rarely stops ringing. Referrals arrive in bursts, prior authorizations stall in payer portals and staff juggle paperwork while patients sit on hold. Independent clinics have been patching these problems with more headcount for decades, even as labor costs rise due to a shortage of highly specialised workers and burnout deepens. TriFetch was built to take that administrative weight off the clinic. By automating the three workflows that dominate clinic operating costs: patient calls, referral processing, and prior authorization, TriFetch helps clinics save on 50%+ of administrative costs while also increasing revenue. This can translate into 1m+ savings for a mid-size practice.

TriFetch announced a $1.9 million pre-seed round led by Nexus Venture Partners with participation from angels from Google, Hipprocratic, Mercor, MIT to scale its automation platform for the front, mid, and back office of specialty care. 

The pressure TriFetch is targeting is structural. Independent clinics face the same administrative load as large health systems with a fraction of the staff. A single prior authorization can take 45 minutes and referral coordination often means hours on hold. Patient calls pile up while the front desk triages between the waiting room and the phone line and those left unanswered go to an inbox with hundreds of unread messages.

“Clinics are doing everything they can to keep up, but the administrative workload keeps expanding,” said Varuni Sarwal, CEO and co-founder of TriFetch. “We built TriFetch to plug into how clinics already run and take the tasks staff dread the most off their plate, calls, referrals, and prior auth, so teams can focus on the parts of care that require the human touch.”

TriFetch automates the three workflows that eat the most staff time. Its multilingual voice agent handles patient calls end to end – inbound inquiries, outbound scheduling, and follow-ups. Its referral engine routes and processes referrals, verifies eligibility, and books patients with humans in the loop. And its prior auth automation submits and tracks requests so paperwork delays never push costs onto patients. The platform plugs directly into how a clinic already runs, with no EHR migration or retraining required. “Clinics don’t need more software where every new tool adds another tab, another login, another thing to learn; they need less friction. TriFetch integrates as the connective tissue of a clinic’s existing operations, adapting to the clinic’s ecosystem and not the other way around,” says co-founder and COO Rosemary He, who is leading the product team. 

Cofounders Varuni Sarwal and Rosemary He met at UCLA while completing their PhDs in Computer Science, where they worked at the intersection of AI and healthcare. Varuni’s research applied machine learning to tabular EHR to predict depression and sepsis while Rosemary built computer vision models to predict Alzheimer’s progression in longitudinal 3D medical images. After publishing in top venues like Nature and ICML, the contrast they saw  from the inside was hard to ignore: while AI was compounding at the frontier, most specialty clinics still ran on fax, phone trees, and manual paperwork. They built TriFetch to bring that capability into specialty care, and have taken a forward-deployed approach, embedding alongside clinic teams until the system runs end-to-end.

TriFetch is currently running multiple active pilots with specialty clinics across California. In an ophthalmology clinic, the doctor and his staff are being overtaken by phone calls and prior authorizations while trying to deliver the highest quality of care to his patients. In a cardiology clinic, staff have been overwhelmed by patient inquiries and internal routing needs. 

In a GI practice, two staff members work full-time processing up to 100 referrals a day and calling patients to schedule them. TriFetch handles that workflow end-to-end, freeing roughly 16 hours of staff time a day and returning more than $200,000 a year to the clinic. For a mid-size specialty practice, that range of recovered costs and captured revenue can run anywhere from $500,000 to $1.4 million a year.

Dr. Shashi Ganti, Ophthalmologist, Cal Retina MD added: “Clinics up and down the US are facing the same administrative headache. Working with TriFetch, we’ve been able to relieve our staff from managing patient calls and scheduling: freeing them up from hundreds of voicemails and phone calls  to focus on the patients in front of them. AI can be incredibly powerful when adopted safely, and I can’t think of a better team to trust with that in my clinic.”

As AI adoption accelerates in healthcare, most tools either target large health systems, solve a single narrow workflow, or are EMR-specific. TriFetch is the first unified, EMR-agnostic automation layer purpose-built for independent clinics that can be customized across specialties and locations, deploying alongside existing systems (NextGen, eCW, Athena, and others) in weeks, not quarters, reducing the need for clinics to stitch together multiple vendors to keep their operations running.

Jishnu Bhattacharjee, Partner at Nexus, commented: “Varuni and Rose are deep domain experts in healthcare AI. Healthcare administrative workflows represent one of the largest untapped opportunities for AI, and the Trifetch team is uniquely positioned to unlock it. They combine deep AI capabilities with real-world clinical understanding to build what we believe can become a category-defining company in healthcare AI. We are excited to partner with Trifetch and support them on this journey”, said 

Calls, referrals, and prior authorization for specialty clinics are the starting point. Over time, TriFetch plans to build the first AI-native operating layer for healthcare systems, expanding nationwide from independent specialty clinics into multi-specialty groups, primary care, and hospital-owned networks, deepening EHR integrations, and connecting the tools clinics already use to the workflows that keep care moving. The goal: less time on paperwork, more time with patients.

TriFetch is guided by a founding cohort of 10+ strategic advisors drawn from operators inside the country’s leading health systems, including former NextGen co-founder Tim Eggena, senior leaders from Sutter Health, Johns Hopkins, Mayo, UW Health, Revere Health, Springfield Clinic, and UChicago Medicine. The cohort reflects TriFetch’s operator-first approach: the people who have run the workflows TriFetch automates are the same people helping shape the product.

SK Telecom Presents AI Reasoning Model at ICLR 2026 to Identify Customers’ True Preferences

Seoul, Korea, Apr 28 – SK Telecom (NYSE:SKM, hereinafter referred to as “SKT”) announced today that its new AI recommendation model, which more accurately identifies customers’ true preferences, was presented at a leading AI conference, the International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) 2026.

ICLR, along with the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) and the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML), is regarded as one of the world’s top three AI conferences. Technologies presented at these events see industrial application within a few years or become benchmarks for academic research and product development, making them key indicators of the future direction of AI.

The research paper, titled “More Than What Was Chosen: LLM-Based Explainable Recommendation Beyond Noisy User Preferences,” centers on SKT’s proprietary Conflict-Aware Direct Preference Optimization (C-APO) technology. The technology filters out conflicting preference signals, enabling more accurate recommendations of products that customers genuinely desire.

To achieve this, SKT introduced the concept of “coherent preference” — reflecting recurring patterns and contextual coherence across a customer’s overall behavior. Through this approach, the model distinguishes coherent preferences from revealed preferences derived from single actions, such as accidental clicks or one-time, unintentional choices.

This approach increases the learning weight when the two preference signals align, reinforcing the recommendation. When the signals conflict, the model treats the discrepancy as noise and lowers the learning weight, enabling it to identify the most appropriate recommendations.

Conventional AI recommendation systems have struggled to interpret conflicting preference signals — for example, a customer who typically watches romance films may receive only action recommendations after watching even a single action movie based on a friend’s suggestion. SKT’s new recommendation model, however, filters out such inconsistencies to identify the customer’s true preferences.

SKT plans to apply this research to future agent-based customer recommendation systems that integrate AI for interpreting usage context, generating recommendation candidates, and refining results through an orchestration layer. The company aims to deliver more advanced and personalized recommendations tailored to each customer’s needs and behavior.

“The technology lays the foundation for delivering personalized recommendations by better understanding customers’ true preferences,” said Seok Ji-hwan, Head of AI/DT Data Office at SK Telecom. “The presentation at ICLR 2026 marks a milestone in SKT’s AI transformation to enhance customer experience, and we will continue to advance AI technologies that customers can benefit from.”

Pixel Doors and Beyond The Pixels® Launch ‘Astro Burn’ into Early Access Following a Triumphant London Games Festival Showcase

Riding a massive surge in Steam wishlists, the hyper-vibrant retro cute-em-up brings its “awesomely bonkers” arcade chaos to PC and Mac today.

AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS & LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM, April 27, 2026: Indie publisher Pixel Doors and London-based developer Beyond The Pixels® have officially launched Astro Burn into Early Access on Steam today. The fast-paced sidescroller invites players back to the golden era of arcade cute-em-ups, fueled by a delightfully bizarre, internet-era aesthetic.

The launch follows an incredibly successful week for Beyond The Pixels® at the London Games Festival 2026. Selected as an Official Selection for the New Game Plus showcase, Astro Burn drew massive in-person crowds and glowing feedback. The event triggered a glorious surge in Steam wishlists, driven heavily by players who don’t traditionally play the bullet-hell genre, proving the game’s unique blend of chaotic action and approachability.

In Astro Burn, players control Astro, a sassy space cat armed to the teeth. Aided by her robot companion, Astro blasts through waves of cute enemies across 10 diverse levels, from deep space and mechanical worlds to underwater realms and sprawling cities. By unleashing over-the-top, stackable anime-style power-ups, players must annihilate screen-filling waves of adorable enemies in a chaotic bid to find her way home.

Developed by film, tv and games industry veteran HaZ Dulull, the retro-inspired title features both solo and local couch co-op modes, designed to be deeply satisfying for hardcore shmup fans while remaining highly accessible for newcomers.

HaZ Dulull, Founder and Game Director at Beyond The Pixels®, said: “We are coming off an absolutely unreal high from the London Games Festival. Hearing players call the game ‘awesomely bonkers’ and ‘insanely original’ was amazing, but my absolute favorite moments were the hesitant players who said they were terrible at shmups, only to give it a try and realize how accessible and fun it actually is. Launching into Early Access today means taking that incredible in-person energy and expanding it globally. We want the community right here in the heart of the game with us, helping shape, tune, and push Astro Burn to its final, most meowtastic form.”

Jacek Pudlik, Co-Founder of Pixel Doors, said: “What HaZ and the team experienced at the London Games Festival is exactly why we do this. They proved that Astro Burn has that rare, universal appeal! It captures the addictive chaos of classic arcade shooters but welcomes everyone to the party. We are thrilled to see that momentum translate into a massive surge of wishlists, and even more excited to officially open the doors to Early Access today so players everywhere can finally get their hands on it.”

Astro Burn is available NOW in Early Access for PC and Mac via Steam.

TRAI Seeks Stakeholder Views to Expand Public Wi-Fi Access Across India

The Vodia PBX Now Integrates with Jitsi Meet

 BOSTON: April 27, 2026 – Vodia Networks, Inc., a provider of unified cloud communications solutions to enterprises, contact centers, and service providers, is pleased to announce V70, the newest version of the industry-standard Vodia PBX, now integrates with Jitsi Meet.

Jitsi comprises open-source projects for users who want to build and deploy secure video conferencing solutions, including Jitsi Videobridge and Jitsi Meet. These components enable conferences over the internet, while additional community projects provide features such as audio, dial-in, recording, and simulcasting. Because Jitsi is open-source and based on WebRTC, it gives organizations more flexibility and control over their conferencing environment compared to fully hosted solutions.

 Jitsi Videobridge passes participants’ video and audio streams directly to each participant instead of mixing them first, resulting in better quality and lower latency. For organizations running their own service, this also provides a more scalable and cost-efficient solution. Additional capabilities include:

●      Compatible with WebRTC, the open standard for Web communication

●      Advanced video routing support for simulcast, bandwidth estimations, and scalable video coding

●      Simple installation with Ubuntu and Debian packages

The Vodia PBX integration with Jitsi Meet connects the Vodia phone system with a self-hosted Jitsi Meet server, enabling one-click video conferencing directly from the web portal. It allows businesses and service providers to manage both voice and video communication within a single system, without relying on external conferencing platforms:

●      Conferences are secured with JWT authentication

●      Moderators receive a signed token while guests join with a shared link

●      Room names are generated automatically using the extension number

●      A random hash prevents unauthorized access

Documentation

A detailed configuration guide for the Vodia PBX Jitsi Meet integration is available on the Vodia documentation website.