-For the full-year, Tata Consultancy Services saw sales rise 4.2% and cross the $30 billion revenue mark, but it found the first quarter of this year tougher.
In the three months ended 30 June, sales dived 3.1% year-on-year at constant currency to $7.42 billion. But, at least, operating margins did rise to 24.5%.
-Manchester headquartered technology training provider Northcoders Group has issued a trading update, which states it can no longer support market expectations regarding its sales and profitability in FY25 – the 12 months ending 31 December.
It says the change to government funding of Skills Bootcamp programmes to a fully regional model, announced in April, has not progressed as rapidly as anticipated, leading to a lack of contract awards via the new system.
As a result, Northcoders has taken steps to cut around £2.2m from its annualised fixed expenditure, representing a massive 40% decrease on last year’s reported cost base.
The likes of the BBC, Barclays, and AO are among Northcoders existing commercial client list. Overall, double-digit increases in sales and profits had been expected for this year, but no more. Although Northcoders believes the switch in the government funding model will mean delays to contract awards, rather than cancellations.
-UKG, a provider of HR, payroll, and workforce management solutions, has announced that UKG Bryte is now available for organisations using the UKG Pro Workforce Management suite in the UK.
UKG Bryte is an AI-powered assistant designed to enhance workplace experiences and streamline people-focused operations by leveraging generative GenAI to help businesses build more efficient and engaging environments.
UKG Bryte supports frontline employees through quick access to information about schedules, available shifts, time off requests, and company policies. For managers, UKG Bryte streamlines daily operations through conversational reporting, which allows them to pull insights from complex data.
Embedded into the UKG Pro Workforce Management and UKG Ready suites, UKG Bryte AI is trained on the “world’s largest collection of people, workforce, and culture data”. It delivers “unparalleled intelligence” by drawing from over 30 billion frontline interactions, and is “enriched with an organisation’s unique demographics, engagement, and productivity metrics”, says the provider.
-Tintri, a DDN data management subsidiary, has revamped its global partner programme.
“At Tintri, we are committed to investing in partner success - delivering smarter tools, stronger support, and more rewarding opportunities to grow together,” said Darren Gross, EMEA channel director at Tintri. “Our enhanced Partner Programme reflects this focus, we’re helping our partners thrive in a rapidly evolving market.”
-BlueSnap, a global payment orchestration platform for B2B and B2C businesses, has announced significant growth in its Channel Partner Program, with 11 new system integrators joining since its launch in September 2024.
The programme now includes 41 partners globally, representing a 137% increase, underscoring the strong demand for “seamless, scalable global payments solutions”, the provider said.
BlueSnap’s Channel Partner Program is designed to help SIs offer end-to-end payment capabilities to clients without the need for complex integrations or multiple vendors. “As businesses increasingly look to streamline operations and reduce tech stack complexity, BlueSnap provides a single integration that supports cross-border payments, mobile and subscription billing, and a wide range of payment types,” said the firm.
System integrators in the programme are equipped to implement BlueSnap’s global payment solutions across a variety of widely used business platforms, including: BigCommerce, Chargebee, Magento, Microsoft Dynamics Business Central, NetSuite, QuickBooks, Sage Intacct, Shopware, WooCommerce, and Zuora.
-Thales and Hexagon’s Manufacturing Intelligence division have signed a strategic five-year framework agreement, formalising Hexagon’s role as a key technology partner to support Thales’ operational performance and quality assurance across the EMEA region.
The agreement appoints Hexagon as its strategic supplier of metrology (measuring) equipment, software, services, and maintenance for all Thales divisions and countries within EMEA.
By simplifying procurement and standardising access to advanced measurement and quality assurance technologies, the partnership enables Thales teams across the region to ramp up production while ensuring consistency and traceability in quality assurance processes, we are told.
-Congruity360, a provider of AI-enabled data governance solutions, has announced “record-breaking momentum”, highlighted by 110% revenue growth in FY24, strategic global customer expansion, and the addition of new channel and marketplace partnerships.
The company also secured a new round of growth financing from Flow Capital, “further fuelling innovation and scale across the expanding customer and partner ecosystem”, said the firm.
-Arago, a Paris- and Silicon Valley-based startup pioneering a new class of energy-efficient AI chips powered by light, has raised $26m in seed funding to “accelerate” the commercialisation of its photonic processor, codenamed “JEF”.
The surge in AI adoption has led to exponential – and unsustainable – growth in energy consumption. Arago’s mission is to “radically rethink” AI’s compute infrastructure.
The heart of “JEF” is a proprietary photonic technology: instead of transistors, it uses lasers to process data with photons – particles of light that generate far less heat than electrons in conventional processors. By harnessing these inherent advantages, the chip is designed to deliver 10× lower energy consumption than today’s leading GPUs at equivalent performance and cost.
Pierre Boudier, former Nvidia Fellow and Lead GPU Architect at Intel, said: “I’ve worked with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang for nearly a decade. I know what it takes to succeed in this industry, and I see a lot of those same qualities in the Arago team.”
The oversubscribed $26m seed round was co-led by Earlybird, Protagonist and Visionaries Tomorrow, with participation from Generative IQ and C4 Ventures, among others. The round also includes investment from prominent angel investors across the semiconductor, AI, and software industries, including Bertrand Serlet (former VP at Apple and co-founder of Fungible), Christophe Frey (GM at Arm), Olivier Pomel (co-founder of Datadog), Thomas Wolf (co-founder of Hugging Face), and Jack Abraham (co-founder of Exowatt), among others.
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