TechTaffy

tech:

taffy

Alibaba Cloud, MDEC launch Malaysia City Brain initiative for smart governance

By TechTaffy Desk

Alibaba Cloud, the cloud computing arm of Alibaba Group, has launched the Malaysia City Brain initiative, in collaboration with the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC), the country’s digital economy development agency, and Dewan Bandaraya Kuala Lumpur (DBKL), the city council in the capital.

The initiative, powered by Alibaba Cloud’s large-scale computing engine Apsara, offers acquisition, integration, and analysis of big and heterogeneous data generated by sources in urban spaces through video and image recognition, data mining and machine learning technology. It is expected to enable Malaysian urban planners and city officials to upgrade their city governance and decision-making, said Alibaba in a statement.

In the first phase of the program, Kuala Lumpur will roll out the Malaysia City Brain for use in traffic management.

The Malaysia Tianchi big data program

In another development, Alibaba Cloud has announced the Malaysia Tianchi big data program, a big data crowd intelligence platform aimed at developing solutions for real world problems. Backed by MDEC, the initiative aims to incubate 500 data professionals and 300 startups in Malaysia within two years.

The program will be integrated into Alibaba Cloud’s Tianchi global community.

[Image courtesy: Alibaba]

Just in

Series E

Vercel raises $250M

San Francisco-based Vercel, a frontend cloud platform provider, has secured $250 million in Series E funding, bringing the company's valuation to $3.25 billion.
Series A

Worky raises $6M (Mexico)

Mexico City-based Worky, a provider of HR and payroll software solutions for Mexican companies, has closed a $6 million Series A financing round.
Industry

Amazon announces $1.31B investment in France

Amazon has announced a new investment of about $1.31 billion (€1.2 billion) in France, which the company says will lead to the creation of over 3,000 permanent jobs in the country.
Around the web

Amazon Web Services CEO Adam Selipsky to step down — CNBC

Adam Selipsky, CEO of Amazon’s cloud computing business, will step down from his role next month. Matt Garman, senior vice president of sales and marketing at Amazon Web Services, will succeed Mr. Selipsky after he exits the company June 3, writes Annie Palmer. 
AI

Palo Alto Networks, Accenture expand alliance to offer generative AI services

Palo Alto Networks and Accenture have announced the expansion of their strategic alliance to provide new offerings that combine Palo Alto Networks' Precision AI technology with Accenture's secure generative AI services.