Merlin Assist – Gen AI chatbot awarded Innovative Solution of the Year by CPO100
PRINCETON, N.J. — (BUSINESS WIRE) — Zycus, a pioneer in Cognitive Procurement Software, proudly announces the continued success of its AI Council, uniting CPOs representing over $0.5 trillion of annual spends, and leading analysts to propel AI advancements in Source-to-Pay (S2P).
The recent session focused on Gen-AI use cases.
Innovative Leap with Merlin Assist
At the heart of these advancements is Merlin Assist, an AI-powered chatbot integrated with Microsoft Teams, offering a singular, streamlined interface for procurement activities. Enriched with the capability to utilize any Generative AI LLM, like OpenAI / ChatGPT or Bard AI, Merlin Assist is poised to redefine business engagement within procurement. Incidentally, Merlin Assist – Gen AI chatbot was awarded the most “Innovative Solution of the year” by CPO100 at their 2nd annual conclave held in Dubai.
Aatish Dedhia, Founder & CEO of Zycus, emphasizes, “Merlin Assist is more than a technological innovation; it’s a paradigm shift in procurement. Integrating Generative AI into our platform empowers users to navigate procurement processes with unprecedented ease and intelligence. We have always believed AI is the new UI, and Gen-AI truly makes it possible.”
Council’s Collaborative Triumphs
The AI Council, comprising prominent leaders Hervé Le Faou (Heineken), Brian Roche (Westfield Insurance), Daniele Landi (Danone), Piotr Teodorczyk (Suntory Holdings), Florence Tinsley-Roy (PwC), Robert Andersen (NewsCorp), Shyamala Chalakudi (Hewlett Packard Enterprise), Chris Sawchuk (The Hackett Group), and Kishore Pejavara (Delta Air Lines), among others, prioritized key Gen-AI use cases for the source-to-pay process. The members voted on the 20+ Gen-AI uses cases demonstrated live by Zycus which were developed over the past 4 months based on specific inputs from AI Council meet held in June 2023.
Top voted priorities include:
RFP generation,
Category strategy development,
Contract summary creation, and
Supplier discovery.
These use cases address current challenges and pave the way for strategic advancements in procurement.
Path to General Availability
While thousands of end users across key Zycus clients across the USA & Europe are currently using the Beta version of Merlin Assist, the Gen-AI powered Merlin Assist is scheduled for general availability by early next year. This early adoption is a testament to the significant impact Merlin Assist is anticipated to have across various industries.
About Zycus:
Zycus is the pioneer in Cognitive Procurement software and has been a trusted partner of choice for large global enterprises for two decades. Zycus has been consistently recognized by Gartner, Forrester, and other analysts for its Source-to-Pay integrated suite. Zycus powers its S2P software with the revolutionary Merlin AI Suite. Merlin AI takes over the tactical tasks and empowers procurement and AP officers to focus on strategic projects; offers data-driven actionable insights for quicker and smarter decisions, and its conversational AI offers a B2C type user-experience to the end-users.
Integrating the Heeluxe SmartLast system with Aetrex’s 3D foot scanning technology, retailers can provide fit recommendations to consumers upon program implementation
TEANECK, N.J. — (BUSINESS WIRE) — Aetrex, Inc. (“Aetrex”), a global market leader in foot scanning technology and data-driven orthotics and comfort footwear, today announced FitStarter, a personalized footwear recommendation platform designed to help retailers improve their shoe fitting service for shoppers, reduce returns and increase customer satisfaction.
Developed in partnership with the premier shoe fit testing company Heeluxe, FitStarter is an accurate, turnkey starting point to Aetrex’s AI-powered shoe match-making platform, FitGenius. Retailers can easily add FitStarter to their existing Albert 3D foot scanner (Albert 2 Pro or Albert 3DFit) software.
To support FitStarter, Aetrex is establishing multiple Fit Labs to analyze shoes submitted by participating retailers each season. A member of the Aetrex Technology team will analyze the shoes using the patented Hank Jr Shoe Fitting SmartLast system developed by Heeluxe, which leverages pressure sensor technology. Within days, retailers will have footwear and fit recommendations available within their Aetrex Albert software. Once Aetrex collects shoe data within the Fit Lab, the FitStarter platform will analyze each customer’s unique 3D foot scan data collected in store alongside the Fit Lab data to provide immediate, personalized fitting recommendations.
“While FitGenius remains our gold standard fit recommendation offering for retailers, not every retailer has the capacity to quickly collect the required 5,000 foot scan data points necessary to feed the AI platform,” said Larry Schwartz, CEO of Aetrex.
“With FitStarter, retailers can provide accurate shoe fit recommendations from day-one of installation while also collecting the foot scan data points needed to upgrade to the premium FitGenius AI.”
The FitStarter program provides in-store shoppers with personalized fit recommendations, while FitGenius has the capability to provide ideal footwear recommendations to consumers both in store and online. After a shopper completes an Aetrex 3D foot scan at a participating retail location, FitStarter will rank the retailer’s footwear inventory based on the likelihood of a good fit for that individual from excellent to poor. It will also display a graphic of the consumer’s selected shoe, highlighting areas that fit well and potential areas of pressure. FitStarter also considers the shopper’s preference for shoe fit, ranging from snug to roomy.
“Like Aetrex, Hank Jr Shoe Fitting is focused on data-driven technology solutions to improve footwear fit and design, bringing natural synergy to our partnership,” said Dr. Geoffrey Gray, founder of Heeluxe and Hank Jr Shoe Fitting, Inc.
“This partnership allows us to bring our shoe data and testing process to the masses in an effort to help shoppers around the world get into the right fitting footwear on the first try, quickly and easily.”
FitStarter will be available to existing and interested Aetrex foot scanning partners on January 1, 2024 on a service subscription model. To learn more about FitStarter and all Aetrex technology offerings, visit aetrex.com.
About Aetrex
Aetrex, Inc. is widely recognized as a global leader in foot scanning technology and data-driven orthotics and comfort footwear. Aetrex has developed state-of-the-art foot scanning devices, including Albert, Albert 2 Pro and Albert 3DFit (2022 and 2023 CES Innovation Award Honorees), Albert Pressure and iStep, designed to accurately measure feet and determine foot type and pressure points. Since 2002, Aetrex has placed over 12,000 scanners worldwide that have performed more than 50 million unique customer foot scans, currently averaging more than 2.5 million scans a year.
The company is renowned for its over-the-counter orthotics – the worlds #1 premium foot orthotic. With fashion, function and quality at the forefront, Aetrex also designs and manufactures stylish, performance footwear. Based in New Jersey, Aetrex is consistently named one of New Jersey’s Top 100 Privately Held Companies and was also included in NJBIZ’s Top 30 Manufacturing Companies. It has remained privately owned by the Schwartz family for three generations. For additional information, visit www.aetrex.com.
EDISON, N.J. — (BUSINESS WIRE) — According to new research released by Opengear, a Digi International company (NASDAQ, DGII, www.digi.com) and provider of secure and SmartOut of Bandmanagement solutions, a staggering 97% of U.S.-based CIOs surveyed expressed serious concerns about at least one cybersecurity threat.
This comprehensive survey encompassed responses from 502 CIOs and 510 network engineers in the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, and Australia. The primary cybersecurity concerns highlighted in the research included malware (42%), spam and phishing (34%), social engineering (31%), and insider threats (30%). Remarkably, malware also emerged as a significant threat for 42% of the surveyed network engineers.
While only 23% of U.S. CIOs reported distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks as a threat, 38% of network engineers reported a higher level of concern for this specific type of attack, most likely due to their close proximity to the network. To add to these concerns, U.S. engineers said that insufficient investments are enhancing the risk of cyberattacks and/or downtime (59%). This suggests that lack of budget spent on software upgrades and network upgrades, for example, leaves organizations more vulnerable to attack and has the potential to affect business continuity, which is a high priority for 97% of CIOs in the U.S. and 88% of CIOs globally.
“The skills shortage and insufficient investment in networks are two factors that have combined to encourage cybercriminals to breach businesses,” said Gary Marks, President at Opengear. “Smart Out of Band solutions enable organizations to manage their networks at all times from local and remote sites, even during an outage. Network engineers can make smarter, real-time decisions to achieve consistent network resilience and unparalleled visibility, with security and encryption features ensuring that management policies remain continually enforced.”
Continued technology investment is essential to enable engineers to safeguard networks during cyberattacks. The latest research further highlights a concerning trend, indicating that 27% of U.S. network engineers are actively contemplating leaving their current roles due to inadequate funding — an alarming contrast to the global average of 21%.
About Opengear
Opengear, a Digi International company, delivers secure, resilient access and automation to support critical IT infrastructure on the First Day, Every Day and Worst Day. Through presence and proximity, Opengear solutions enable provisioning, orchestration, and remote management of network devices through innovative software and appliances. Opengear solutions are trusted by global organizations across financial, digital communications, retail, and manufacturing sectors. The company is headquartered in New Jersey, with an R&D center in Brisbane, Australia.
Digi International (NASDAQ: DGII) is a leading global provider of business and mission-critical Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity products and solutions. We help our customers create next-generation connected products and solutions to deploy, monitor, and manage critical communications infrastructures and compliance standards in demanding environments with high levels of security, relentless reliability, and bulletproof performance. Founded in 1985, the company has helped customers connect more than 100 million things – and counting. For more information, visit www.digi.com, or call 877-912-3444 (U.S.) or 952-912-3444 (International).
The Himalayan Kingdom quietly spent millions building its own bitcoin mining operation. Now, using satellite imagery, Forbes has uncovered the secret locations of the world’s largest state-owned mines.
— Dozens of shipping containers lie hidden behind a hillside south of Thimphu, the Himalayan capital of Bhutan, one of the world’s most isolated nations.
Inside, millions of dollars of bitcoin mining machines work unceasingly to amass the valuable currency that now fascinates the country’s monarch — and his kingdom. Under the reign of Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck, the “Dragon King,” Bhutan has been quietly transformed into a crypto Shangri-La with its government dedicating land, funding and energy to operations like these, which it hopes will avert a looming economic crisis.
But Bhutanese officials have never disclosed the location or scope of these facilities. And when it became the first country to have founded a sovereign bitcoin mine approximately four years ago, few outside of Bhutan knew. Its government only began commenting on its digital asset investments after Forbes first reported details of its multi-million-dollar portfolio earlier this year, which were exposed by the bankruptcies of fallen crypto lenders BlockFi and Celsius, with whom it had banked significant holdings.
Now, Forbes has identified the sites of what appear to be four mines run by the Thunder Dragon kingdom, based on sources with knowledge of Bhutan’s crypto investments and confirmed through satellite imagery from Planet Labs, Satellite Vu and Google Earth. They show long rectangular mining units, data center cooling systems and high capacity power lines and transformers that run from Bhutan’s hydroelectric plants to the sites. They have never been publicly disclosed.
One facility — the pilot location for Bhutan’s bitcoin mining efforts, a source said — was built near Dochula Pass, an area that holds cultural and political significance for its 108 memorial shrines dedicated to fallen Bhutanese soldiers. Planet Labs and Google Earth satellite imagery indicate that earthmoving began on the site in 2020 with construction appearing to have finished in late 2022. Aerial views show a cluster of green and white-roofed mining units enclosed by miles of forest. Though just steps from a busy highway, Google Street View suggests it is completely hidden from unknowing passersby. A second source told Forbes that the ground has been leveled along this stretch of road to provide additional cover for the site.
A second mine is located near Trongsa, a town east of Thimphu and ancestral seat of the current Wangchuck dynasty. A third is situated in the heavily forested district of Dagana, near a middle school that caters to children in the rural community.
What appears to be the kingdom’s fourth and largest mine sits on the bones of a contentious — and failed — $1 billion government megaproject called “Education City,” an effort to establish an international center “for education and knowledge” in Bhutan. The mine runs alongside the country’s first paved road, Phuentsholing-Thimphu national highway, but is concealed behind mountainous terrain. Only transformers and power lines betray the fact that a bitcoin mine now occupies the site. Historical satellite imagery shows that its construction began around December 2021, coinciding with the import of $193 million in “processing units,” according to customs data from the Ministry of Finance. The imports were appended with the same tariff code used by bitcoin mining hardware companies.
Bhutan had pitched the Education City project to its citizens as a means to secure their future amid rising youth unemployment, surging emigration numbers and brain drain. Roughly 1.5% of Bhutan’s population emigrated last year to Australia alone, many seeking job opportunities and better pay. In Bhutan, the minimum wage is set at just $45 per month and approximately 12% of its population lives below the poverty line, according to local newspaper Kuensel.
Education City was supposed to change that. In 2009, Bhutan’s government paid consulting firm McKinsey & Co. some $9 million to help design a $1 billion “world-class regional hub for health, education, finance, ICT services.” Nestled between the confluence of two rivers, the 1,000-acre campus would be a beacon of the country’s experimental Gross National Happiness economic model, and a higher ed hub for Asia. It was to host satellites of some of the most prestigious universities in the world, as well as R&D facilities, laboratories, hotels and event centers. And according to the Bhutanese government, it would promote “Brand Bhutan,” creating a “green and sustainable economy,” “culturally and spiritually sensitive industries” and a “knowledgeable society.”
It did none of those things. Plagued by political scandals, mismanagement and innumerable delays, Education City was scrapped in 2014. But left behind were roads, bridges, a water supply and, crucially, power lines — building blocks for a bitcoin mine.
The kingdom’s sovereign investing arm, Druk Holdings & Investment (DHI), confirmed the mines’ existence. “Sites for bitcoin-mining related facilities in Bhutan have been selected based on the logistical needs of the operations such as power supply and a variety of other factors,” it told Forbesthrough an outside communications firm. It declined to comment on their locations, however, stating that “DHI does not disclose commercially sensitive details of its operations.”
Bitcoin was a Hail Mary addition to Bhutan’s economic masterplan. The kingdom’s finances have long been underpinned by tourism revenues and the export of a massive surplus of hydropower to its neighbor India. But the Covid pandemic tanked the $88.6 million annual revenue the country collected from $65-a day visa fees, requiring an urgent course correction. According to multiple sources, Bhutanese government officials began holding talks with bitcoin miners and suppliers sometime in 2020.
DHI, which oversees Bhutan’s bitcoin operations, told local newspaper The Bhutanesethat it “entered the mining space” when the cryptocurrency’s price was $5,000 (it was last valued at this level in April 2019 but is now worth $36,000). Bhutan’s own import data and satellite imagery suggest that its operations truly ramped up in 2020. In May, when Forbes asked DHI to confirm that timing, a spokesperson for the fund would say only that a series of bitcoin investments were made “in a period in 2019.” They added that DHI was “currently net positive in our digital asset position.” Bitcoin’s price collapsed from $69,000 in November 2021 to under $17,000 last December.
in November 2021 to under $17,000 last December.
The site in Dochula sits alongside a public road but is largely hidden by the landscape.
The Bhutanese reported in June that DHI was planning to sell down its bitcoin stockpile to fund a 50% salary hike for government officials worth $72 million, as Bhutan faces an economic and political crisis with a trade deficit running down its hard currency reserve to just $689 million. (This will cover just 14 months of imports while the country’s constitution requires 12 months of reserves).
Several sources inside Bhutan told Forbes that the mines are now an open secret, though neither the Bhutanese government nor DHI have formally disclosed their existence. In emails to Forbes, DHI has consistently declined to comment on the scope or financing of its cryptocurrency regime.
DHI, which also operates the nation’s flagship airline, hydroelectric power plants and a cheese factory, does not provide any breakdown of revenues or investment in bitcoin mining in its annual accounts beyond noting it had raised foreign currency bonds to fund the project. Bhutan’s Ministry of Finance has been equally quiet. Outside academics and insiders who specialize in monitoring global bitcoin activity told Forbesthat the country’s mining activities remain a conundrum. DHI claimed that it was “not involved in decisions as to the use of funds that DHI pays out to the Government.”
— The company will use the funds to add more financial services to the platform, including personal loans and insurance, and also hire more talent in product and tech development areas
Scapia, the travel credit-card startup launched by Flipkart’s former senior vice president Anil Goteti, has raised $23 million in its Series A funding round led by Elevation Capital and Binny Bansal’s fund 3State Ventures.
The round also saw participation from its existing investors Matrix Partners India and Tanglin Venture Partners.
“There is a massive opportunity for us and we will use the funds to grow our customer base, we will also look at diversifying our product suite and add more services like personal loans and travel insurance by next year,” founder and CEO Goteti told Moneycontrol.
The firm also plans to add more banking partners. At present, it has a tie-up with Federal Bank for credit cards. The firm is looking to hire more talent in product and tech development areas, it said.
— Failed coups, as seen at OpenAI, often accelerate the thing that they were trying to prevent
— Over the past week, OpenAI’s board went through four CEOs in five days.
Over the past week, OpenAI’s board went through four CEOs in five days.
It accused the original chief executive, Sam Altman, of lying, but later backed down from that and refused to say what that meant.
Ninety per cent of the organisation’s staff signed an open letter saying they’d quit if the board didn’t. Silicon Valley was both riveted and horrified.
By Wednesday, Altman was back, two of the three external board members had been replaced, and everyone could get some sleep.
It would be easy to say that this chaos showed that both OpenAI’s board and its curious subdivided non-profit and for-profit structure were not fit for purpose. One could also suggest that the external board members did not have the appropriate background or experience to oversee a $90bn company that has been setting the agenda for a hugely important technology breakthrough.
One could probably say less polite things too, and all of that might be true, but it would also be incomplete. As far as we know (and the very fact that I have to say that is also a problem), the underlying conflict inside OpenAI was one that a lot of people have pointed to and indeed made fun of over the past year.
OpenAI was created to try to build a machine version of something approximating to human intelligence (so-called “AGI,” or artificial general intelligence). The premise was that this was possible within years rather than decades, and potentially very good but also potentially very dangerous, not just for pedestrian things such as democracy or society but for humanity itself.
That’s the reason for the strange organisational structure — to control the risk. Altman has been building this thing as fast as possible, while also saying very loudly and often that this thing is extremely dangerous and governments should get involved to control any attempts to build it. Well, which is it?
Many in tech think that airing such concerns is a straightforward attempt at anti-competitive regulatory capture. This particularly applies to broader moves against open-source AI models (seen in the White House’s executive order on AI last month): people think that OpenAI is trying to get governments to ban competition. That might be true, but I personally think that people who claim AGI is both close and dangerous are sincere, and that makes their desire to build it all the more conflicted. That seems to be the best explanation of what has happened at OpenAI: those who think we should slow down and be careful mounted a coup against those who think we should speed up and be careful.
Part of the problem and conflict when it comes to discussing AGI is that it’s an abstract concept — a thought experiment — without any clear or well-understood theoretical model. The engineers on the Apollo Program knew how far away the moon was and how much thrust the rocket had but we don’t know how far away AGI is, nor how close OpenAI’s large language models are, nor whether they can get there.
You could spend weeks of your life watching videos of machine-learning scientists arguing about this and conclude only that they don’t know either. ChatGPT might scale all the way to the Terminator in five years, or in five decades, or it might not. This might be like looking at a 1920s biplane and worrying that it might go into orbit. We don’t know. This means most conversations about the risk of AI become hunts for metaphors (it’s “like” nuclear weapons, or a meteorite, or indeed the Apollo Program).
Or they dredge up half-forgotten undergraduate philosophy classes (Pascal’s wager! Plato’s cave!), or resort to argument from authority (Geoff Hinton is worried! Yann LeCun is not!). In the end, this comes down to how you, instinctively, feel about risk. If you cannot know what is close or not, is that a reason to worry or a reason not to worry? There is no right answer.
Unfortunately for the “doomers”, the events of the last week have sped everything up. One of the now resigned board members was quoted as saying that shutting down OpenAI would be consistent with the mission (better safe than sorry). But the hundreds of companies that were building on OpenAI’s application programming interfaces are scrambling for alternatives, both from its commercial competitors and from the growing wave of open-source projects that aren’t controlled by anyone.
AI will now move faster and be more dispersed and less controlled. Failed coups often accelerate the thing that they were trying to prevent.
Indeed, a common criticism of the doomers is that their idea that one powerful piece of software and a few brilliant engineers can transform the world is just another form of naive and simplistic tech utopianism — it fails to understand the real nature of power, complexity and human systems. The doomers on the board demonstrated exactly that — they did not know how power works.
— Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella made a huge bet on the world’s hottest AI company. After it nearly blew up on him, he now emerges with closer ties to its leader, Sam Altman.
Satya Nadella couldn’t help himself.
Microsoft’s MSFT -0.11%decrease; red down pointing triangle. Itschief executive was supposed to be singularly focused on saving his prized asset during one of the most chaotic weekends in the history of Silicon Valley. Instead his mind kept drifting to cricket.
He couldn’t pay close attention to his native India playing Australia in the Cricket World Cup because he found himself in the middle of another game with more action and a whole lot more at stake. Still, in the midst of frantic negotiating and disaster planning, Nadella kept checking the score and reporting updates about his favorite sport to less fanatical colleagues. His team was in trouble, but there was still hope for his company.
The nuttiest weekend in his nearly 10 years on the job started last Friday, when Nadella learned just minutes before the rest of the world that OpenAI’s board had just ousted Sam Altman, its co-founder and CEO. The company behind ChatGPT had been seeking a valuation at $90 billion. Rarely has one board decision threatened to destroy so much value in so little time.
Despite the fact that Microsoft had paid billions for a 49% stake in OpenAI, using its technology to power a new generation of software that it promised could revolutionize work, the startup’s biggest investor didn’t have a board seat. Nadella found out at more or less the same time as everyone else that his investment—one that almost single-handedly catapulted Microsoft to the forefront of the artificial-intelligence revolution—had suddenly gone wrong.
But when the board turned on Altman, Altman immediately turned to Nadella. Hours after the boardroom coup last Friday, they were on the phone, discussing how to restore Altman to OpenAI—or join Microsoft. If Altman wasn’t hired back to his place atop OpenAI, the former CEO of the glitziest AI company would become an employee of Microsoft.
By the end of the frenetic weekend, Altman had agreed to start a new AI divisionat the tech giant, so he could keep working with Nadella and take advantage of Microsoft’s access to computing power. Soon it became clear that hundreds of researchers were ready to join Altman at a corporation as sexy as soup. Microsoft prepared to give those engineers everything they needed to continue their work: a floor in LinkedIn’s offices, plentiful cloud-computing resources, Applelaptops. The trillion-dollar company’s employees assured their potential colleagues that they wouldn’t even have to use Microsoft’s workplace-communications app Teams.
— Late on Tuesday night, OpenAI announced the return of Sam Altman, its ousted chief executive officer, along with a revamped board that included one name not often associated with Silicon Valley: Larry Summers.
The economist and former Treasury Secretary joined Bret Taylor, a former co-CEO of Salesforce Inc., and existing board member Adam D’Angelo in forming what the company called an “initial board.”
OpenAI’s prior directors fired Altman suddenly on Friday, setting off a dramatic saga that cast doubt on the future of the most closely-watched startup and technology.
OpenAI said it was still working to “figure out the details” of its new management in a post online. But with Summers it has a board member with deep ties to Wall Street and Washington — and an adamant belief that artificial intelligence is coming for white-collar jobs.
Summers sits on a couple of tech boards already: Block Inc., Jack Dorsey’s payments firm, and the software company Skillsoft Corp. He was named an adviser to powerhouse venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz in 2011, but has not been publicly involved with its recent investments. Summers led the Treasury Department in the Clinton administration and worked as an economic adviser in the Obama administration, serving as president of Harvard University in between. He is now a paid contributor to Bloomberg Television.
The few comments he has made about AI have centered on the labor impact.
In 2018, Summers disputed the claims from then Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin that AI would not replace American jobs for 50 to 100 years. “The robots are coming,” Summers wrote in the Washington Post. That year, he also warned of economic catastrophe if the US “loses its lead” in biotech and AI to China.
In December, 2022, a month after the arrival of ChatGPT — the chatbot from OpenAI that set off the recent AI boom — Summers compared the service to the printing press, electricity and even older human advances. “This could be the most important general purpose technology since the wheel or fire,” he said on Bloomberg TV.
Then in April, Summers said ChatGPT was “coming for the cognitive class,” predicting that it would render higher-skilled roles obsolete first. “ChatGPT is going to replace what doctors do, hearing symptoms and making diagnoses, before it changes what nurses do,” he told Bloomberg TV. “It’s going to change what traders do going in and out of financial markets before it changes what sales people do.”
At OpenAI, Summers will likely be tasked with recruiting a fuller board and sorting out the company’s governance. That board could include Altman and Microsoft Corp., its biggest backer, according to a person familiar with the situation who asked not to be identified disclosing details of private negotiations.
In 2005, when Summers was president of Harvard University, his comments that innate differences in sex kept women from flourishing in math and science careers drew outrage. He apologized for the comments.
An email to creditors said that the defunct bitcoin exchange plans to commence cash repayments this year and will likely continue repaying into next year.
Mt. Gox plans to start repaying some creditors “shortly” in cash as stated in an email creditors received today.
The defunct bitcoin exchange, which collapsed in 2014, said in the email that the rehabilitation trustee is “making efforts to commence repayments in cash within the 2023 calendar year.” Repayments, however, will likely “continue into 2024” given the large number of rehabilitation creditors.
“The specific timing of repayment to individual rehabilitation creditors is undetermined, and therefore, it will not be possible to provide advance notice to each rehabilitation creditor regarding the specific timing of their repayment,” Rehabilitation Trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi said in the email.
Kobayashi noted that creditors may check the repayment status in its claim filing system.
In a separate document sent to creditors today, Kobayashi said that on Nov. 17, the rehabilitation trustee received the redemption of 7 billion yen ($46.9 billion) from the trust assets to fund the repayment. The remaining amount of the trust assets following such redemption was 8.8 billion yen, according to the notice.
The latest move appears to mark the first step in repayments for all. In September, Mt. Gox extended the deadline for rehabilitation creditor repayments from Oct. 31, 2023, to Oct. 31, 2024.
Launched in 2010, the Tokyo-based platform gained popularity and became the largest bitcoin exchange by 2013, servicing 70% of all bitcoin trades worldwide. However, it stopped all withdrawals in early 2014 when the business suspended trading. The site soon went offline, and the company filed for bankruptcy protection after losing over 800,000 bitcoins.
About Author
Timmy Shen is an Asia reporter for The Block. Previously, he wrote about crypto and Web3 for Forkast.News from Taiwan after spending more than three years in Beijing covering finance and current affairs at Caixin Global and Chinese tech at TechNode. His China-related reporting has also appeared in The Guardian. When he’s not chasing headlines, you’ll find him savoring hot pot and shabu shabu in a Taipei local haunt. Timmy holds an MS degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. Send tips to tshen@theblock.co or get in touch on X/Telegram @timmyhmshen.
NEW YORK — (BUSINESS WIRE) — #ITservices—Align, the premier global provider of technology infrastructure solutions and Managed IT Services, announces on Friday that it has been named 2023 Managed Service Provider of the year by Channel Futures, the global industry authority in managed services.
Align became eligible for the award by ranking 60th in the 2023 Channel Futures MSP 501. While the general Channel Futures MSP award is based primarily on annual sales, recurring revenue, and profit margins, the MSP of the Year Award is given to a firm that demonstrate business model innovation and excellence in business efficiency and agility in the face of an evolving market.
The awards go to the industry’s high-performance and high-achieving MSPs that not only place prominently on the Channel Futures MSP 501 list but go above and beyond when it comes to customer expertise, employee satisfaction, relationships with vendors and suppliers, and commitment to improving the MSP industry. While the Channel Futures MSP 501 rankings are determined by a complex methodology that factors in many business metrics, the MSP of the Year award goes beyond, looking for MSPs that truly set themselves apart from all others.
The finalists for this year’s MSP of the Year Award include remarkable organizations and executives who have made a significant impact on the managed services landscape. Among other factors, Align was recognized for their ability to maintain a keen understanding of clients’ needs, and provide industry specific guidance on due diligence standards and regulatory requirements set forth by the SEC.
Channel Futures employs a rigorous methodology to compile the MSP 501 rankings, and the MSP of the Year Award delves even deeper, focusing on those who go the extra mile to elevate the industry.
Applications for the Special Awards undergo an initial review by the Channel Futures editorial team and are then presented to a distinguished panel of judges, comprising esteemed figures in the channel. These judges meticulously assess the merits of each application, casting their votes to determine the standout individual or organization deserving of each award.
Channel Futures is pleased to name Align as Managed Service Provider of the Year
“Receiving this award is a huge accomplishment, as it acknowledges those companies, like Align Managed Services, who prioritize outstanding client satisfaction,” said Vinod Paul, Chief Operating Officer, Align.
“At Align, our central focus is on continually improving and expanding our services, fueled by an unwavering commitment to our clients’ success. Our ability to discern the evolving needs of our clients empowers us to identify and leverage the most promising emerging technologies. Specializing in the alternative investment sector, we not only assist clients in meeting but also exceeding the stringent operational due diligence standards and regulatory requirements mandated by the SEC. We take great joy in cultivating strong partnerships with our clients and observing their continuous success.”
Chris Zadrima, Managing Director of Align Managed Services comments, “We are dedicated to the ongoing enhancement of the client experience, emphasizing the integration of technology as not only a pivotal element in daily operations but also a defining factor in the success of our clients’ businesses.”
Award recipients, including Align, were formally acknowledged on the Channel Futures website and received accolades during an exclusive ceremony at the Channel Futures Leadership Summit, held from October 30 to November 2 in Miami, Florida. The ceremony, attended by hundreds of prominent MSPs, marked the introduction of the latest cohort of winners. This annual gathering consistently draws the most influential figures from the MSP and channel partner community, making it a highly anticipated event.
About Channel Futures
Channel Futures is a media and events destination for the information and communication technologies (ICT) channel community. We provide information, perspective and connection for the entire channel ecosystem, including solution providers (SPs), managed service providers (MSPs), managed security service providers (MSSPs), cloud service providers (CSPs), value-added resellers (VARs) and distributors, technology solutions brokerages, subagents and agents, as well as leading technology vendor partners and communication providers.
Channel Futures is part of Informa Tech, a market-leading B2B information provider with depth and specialization in ICT sector. Every year, we welcome 14,000+ subscribers to our research, more than 4 million unique monthly visitors to our digital communities, 18,200+ students to our training programs and 225,000 delegates to our events.
About Align
Align is a premier global provider of technology infrastructure solutions. For over 35 years, leading firms worldwide have relied on Align to guide them through IT challenges, delivering complete, secure solutions for business change and growth. Align is headquartered in Dallas, Texas and has offices in New York City, London, Chicago, San Francisco, Arizona, New Jersey, Texas and Virginia.
To learn more about Align, go to http://www.align.com and follow Align on LinkedIn and at @AlignITAdvisor on Twitter.
