Technology solution provider CEI has acquired Chennai-based Fourth Dimension Technologies, an IT Solutions and Managed service provider (MSP) with a global footprint and 35 years of experience. The acquisition is expected to significantly expand CEI’s service portfolio and its ability to deliver technology solutions to clients across the globe.

Founded in 1992, CEI has expertise in Technology Strategy & Advisory Services, Custom Technology Solutions, Cloud Solutions, Artificial Intelligence, Managed IT Services, and Staffing. 

Fourth Dimension, founded by Jagannathan Narayan, has been providing IT solutions and managed services for over three decades for clients spanning diverse industries such as banking and financial services, manufacturing, and healthcare. This includes 24×7 coverage, Cloud Management (CSP), Managed Security Services (MSSP), Managed IT and Service Desk (Hybrid as well as Cloud), Mobile Device Management, and IT Infrastructure observability and support. Additionally, Fourth Dimension strengthens CEI’s existing partnerships with Microsoft and expands its reach to include industry leaders like Cisco, VMWare, Fortinet, and RSA.

“We are thrilled to welcome the Fourth Dimension team to the CEI family,” said D. Raja, CEO of CEI. “This acquisition is a significant step forward in our mission to provide our clients with the most comprehensive and innovative technology solutions available. Fourth Dimension’s expertise in managed services and their global reach perfectly complement our existing offerings, allowing us to deliver an exceptional level of service and support to a wider audience, while also expanding our offerings to our current clients.”

“Joining forces with CEI represents an exciting opportunity for both of our organizations,” said Jagannathan Narayanan, CEO of Fourth Dimension. “By combining our resources and expertise, we can create a truly unique offering that will empower our clients to thrive in today’s dynamic technological environment.”

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

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Cisco announced that it will acquire cybersecurity and observability company Splunk for $157 per share in cash, representing approximately $28 billion in equity value. 

Forbes reported that the acquisition marks “one of the largest acquisitions of 2023 and the AI era”.

Splunk’s AI powered security and observability offerings are used by organizations worldwide. The company has the likes of Coca Cola, Honda, Dominos and Hyatt as key customers. It holds over 1,100 patents in the field.  

Post the acquisition, Splunk President and CEO Gary Steele will join Cisco’s Executive Leadership Team reporting to Chair and CEO Chuck Robbins.

With the addition of Splunk capabilities and and products to the portfolio, Cisco aims to address the security concerns arising from the accelerated adoption of Generative AI and multicloud environments. The company said that Splunk’s security capabilities complement Cisco’s existing portfolio, and together, will provide security analytics and coverage from devices to applications to clouds. 

“We’re excited to bring Cisco and Splunk together. Our combined capabilities will drive the next generation of AI-enabled security and observability,” said Chuck Robbins, chair and CEO of Cisco. “From threat detection and response to threat prediction and prevention, we will help make organizations of all sizes more secure and resilient.”

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Healthcare fintech firm AyushPay has appointed Vivek Kapoor as its new Co-Founder and Chief Business Officer. Vivek is one of the co-founders of DineOut, the dining out and restaurant tech platform, which was acquired by Swiggy in last year May.  Vivek had joined Swiggy along with other co-founders post the acquisition. 

Kapoor’s accomplishments during his tenure at Dineout were remarkable, he played a pivotal role in building the restaurant tech platform from scratch to Swiggy’s acquisition. Recognizing the potential of AyushPay, Vivek became an angel investor and has now assumed a key role in shaping the company’s future.

Under Kapoor’s leadership, AyushPay has expanded its portfolio by introducing innovative solutions that address critical healthcare challenges. The company’s primary mission is to ensure that every Indian has access to healthcare without facing financial barriers. 

Nimith Agrawal, Founder & CEO at AyushPay, stated, “We are thrilled to have Vivek Kapoor join AyushPay as our Co-Founder. His entrepreneurial expertise and unwavering commitment to our vision have been evident from the beginning when he became an angel investor. Together, we are poised to revolutionize the healthcare industry.”

Reflecting on his new role, Kapoor shared his excitement, saying, “Joining AyushPay is an exciting new chapter in my entrepreneurial journey. My decision to be a part of AyushPay stems from my passion to solve the healthcare affordability problem in India. Every lower and middle-class family in our country has faced this challenge at least once in their lifetime. I aim to alleviate the stress that families already endure due to ongoing health concerns or prevent them from experiencing such hardships through affordable preventive healthcare plans.”

The company also announced its portfolio expansion and launched Ayush Kavach, a comprehensive subscription model providing highly affordable health benefits. 

AyushPay was started by Nimith Aggarwal and Col Hemraj in 2021.

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Databricks, the Data and AI company, announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire MosaicML, a generative AI company co-founded by Naveen Rao. 

The transaction is valued at approximately $1.3 billion, inclusive of retention packages.

MosaicML is known for its open-source and commercially usable MPT large language models (LLMs). With over 3.3 million downloads of MPT-7B (since its release in May 2023) and the recent release of MPT-30B, MosaicML has helped organizations to quickly build and train their own AI models using their data in a cost-effective way. Customers such as AI2 (Allen Institute for AI), Generally Intelligent, Hippocratic AI, Replit and Scatter Labs leverage MosaicML for a wide variety of generative AI use cases. 

Naveen co-founded MosaicML in 2021 after he quit Intel. He previously led Nervana Systems which was acquired by Intel way back in 2016 for $350 million. Intel subsequently announced in 2020 that it had decided to end development work on the Nervana neural network processors (NNP).

“We started MosaicML to solve the hard engineering and research problems necessary to make large scale neural network training and inference more accessible to everyone. With the recent generative AI wave, this mission has taken center stage. We fundamentally believe in a better world where everyone is empowered to train their own models, imbued with their own data, wisdom, and creativity, rather than have this capability centralized in a few generic models,” wrote Naveen and Hanlin Tang, Co-founder & CTO, in a blog post. 

“…. Together with Databricks, we will tip the scales in the favor of many — and we’ll do it as kindred spirits: researchers turned entrepreneurs sharing a similar mission. We look forward to continuing this journey together with the AI community,” said Naveen. 

The entire MosaicML team is expected to join Databricks after the transaction closes. The Databricks Lakehouse Platform, combined with MosaicML’s technology, promises “2x-7x faster training compared to standard approaches” and bring down the cost of training and using LLMs from millions to just a few thousands of dollars. 

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Merchant commerce omnichannel company, Pine Labs announced that it has acquired a proprietary enterprise platform from Bengaluru-based Saluto Wellness. This acquisition will boost the capabilities of Pine Labs’ Issuing Business under the Qwikcilver brand, enabling it to strengthen its offerings across employee rewards and recognition, customer loyalty programs, and channel partner programs for medium and large enterprises.

Pine Labs has a leading presence in India in prepaid, stored value, and gift card solutions through its 2019 acquisition of Qwikcilver, an entity that merged with Pine Labs in September 2022. Saluto Wellness was co-founded by Siva Kumar and Anoop Nambiar in 2017.

Kumar Sudarsan, President, Issuing Business, Pine Labs, said “With Saluto’s platform, we expect to further enhance our leadership across Enterprise Rewards, Recognition, Incentive & Engagement programs. Saluto’s multi-tenant, enterprise grade offering will give us additional capabilities complementing our strengths…”

“Our enterprise solutions are today being used across diverse industry verticals and we are excited to become part of a fast-growing, progressive fintech like Pine Labs and together scale our business further. We have already established a good working relationship with the Pine Labs team and look forward to being a driving force to further Pine Labs’ leadership in this space with innovative outcomes,”

K. Siva Kumar, Co-founder and CEO of Saluto Wellness.

The loyalty program market in India is expected to grow at a CAGR of ~15% over the next decade, and projected to reach US$ 10.8 billion by 2031, from nearly US$ 3Bn in 2022, as per Future Market Insights. ¹

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