02 Sep 2025

AI News Digest

🤖 AI-curated 6 stories

Today's Summary

India’s tech scene is getting a hefty boost with a new $1B alliance between U.S. and Indian VCs, aimed at supporting deep-tech startups in AI and beyond. Meanwhile, Dolby’s stepping up the HDR game with Dolby Vision 2, using AI to make your screen time even more stunning, while Salesforce is cutting back on support staff now that its AI system, Agentforce, is handling half of those customer chats. Over in the enterprise world, Hexaware is teaming up with Replit to spice up corporate coding with secure “vibe coding,” making it easier for non-tech teams to build internal tools.

Stories

U.S. and Indian VCs form $1B+ India Deep Tech Investment Alliance to back AI and other foundational startups

Eight U.S. and Indian venture and private equity firms — including Accel, Blume Ventures and Premji Invest — announced the India Deep Tech Investment Alliance, pledging more than $1 billion over the next decade to fund early-stage deep‑tech companies (AI, semiconductors, robotics, space, biotech, climate tech). The group will combine capital commitments with mentorship and policy engagement to accelerate India‑domiciled foundational‑tech startups and align with the government’s new RDI incentives. Why it matters: the pact targets a persistent funding gap for capital‑intensive AI and deep‑tech startups in India, could speed commercialization of locally incorporated models and hardware, and signals stronger U.S.–India private‑sector collaboration in strategic technology. Short‑term impact includes more deal flow and investor support for seed–Series B startups; longer‑term, it may shift where AI infrastructure and IP are developed and headquartered.

Dolby unveils Dolby Vision 2 with AI 'Content Intelligence' and shot‑level motion control

Dolby announced Dolby Vision 2, the next generation of its HDR format that layers new AI‑driven 'Content Intelligence' features — ambient‑aware tone mapping, Precision Black, bi‑directional tone mapping and a creative 'Authentic Motion' control that applies motion smoothing on a shot‑by‑shot basis. TV makers including Hisense (first to ship Dolby Vision 2 on models powered by MediaTek's Pentonic 800) will adopt the spec. Why it matters: Dolby Vision 2 embeds more automated, metadata‑driven and AI‑informed image processing into displays, shifting more creative control and dynamic optimization to content creators and device firmware. For the consumer and TV industry, it raises the bar for display IQ, accelerates AI integration in home entertainment hardware, and could influence how streaming platforms and manufacturers collaborate on metadata and playback intelligence.

Salesforce says AI cut ~4,000 support roles as agentic systems now handle half of customer chats

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff told Logan Bartlett’s podcast that the company has reduced its customer‑support headcount from roughly 9,000 to about 5,000 after deploying ‘agentic’ AI (Agentforce) that now handles close to 50% of customer conversations. Benioff framed the move as a rebalancing that freed headcount for sales and said AI also helped the company follow up on a decades‑long backlog of leads — a concrete example of AI driving headcount shifts at a major enterprise vendor. The announcement is significant because it shows large enterprise software vendors rapidly operationalizing agentic AI in customer‑facing roles, accelerating cost and labor‑model changes across the industry and raising fresh questions about reskilling, service quality and regulatory scrutiny. ([sfchronicle.com](https://www.sfchronicle.com/tech/article/salesforce-ai-job-cuts-benioff-21025920.php?utm_source=openai), [theloganbartlettshow.simplecast.com](https://theloganbartlettshow.simplecast.com/episodes/ep-127-marc-benioff-ceo-salesforce-strikes-back-at-satya-agi-is-not-here-jDBW2Xas?utm_source=openai))

Ola’s AI unit Krutrim hits third round of cuts as leaders exit amid restructuring

Krutrim — the AI division of Indian mobility group Ola — has carried out a third round of layoffs affecting about 50 employees in its linguistics/transcription teams, and the latest cuts coincide with additional leadership departures as the unit restructures operations. The move underscores continued consolidation and cost‑management at smaller AI teams inside larger consumer tech firms, and highlights the market pressures on language‑tech operations (localization, transcription and regional NLP) where margins and product‑market fit remain challenging. The layoffs may presage further consolidation or strategic pivots for Krutrim and similar in‑house AI initiatives across ride‑hailing and consumer platforms. ([economictimes.indiatimes.com](https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/artificial-intelligence/third-round-of-layoffs-more-leadership-exits-hit-krutrim/articleshow/123642927.cms?utm_source=openai))

Hexaware partners with Replit to bring secure 'vibe coding' to the enterprise

Hexaware announced a strategic partnership with Replit to offer enterprise-grade, secure 'vibe coding' — Replit’s natural-language AI development platform — to business teams. The integration adds SSO, SOC2 compliance, private deployments and role-based access controls so non‑engineering teams can rapidly prototype and build production-grade internal tools while preserving governance and security. Why it matters: it pushes 'vibe coding' from individual developer productivity into regulated enterprise workflows, lowering barriers for product teams and business users to create apps while forcing IT to adopt new governance and security patterns.

Read more → ITPro (ChannelPro / Future)

xAI launches grok-code-fast-1 — a compact agentic coding model aimed at fast, cheap code tasks

Elon Musk’s xAI released grok-code-fast-1, an agentic coding model designed to execute coding tasks quickly and economically and being offered free for a limited time to select partners. The model signals continued competition in turnkey coding assistants (alongside offerings from OpenAI, Microsoft/GitHub and others) and highlights a trend toward smaller, cost‑efficient models for developer tooling and autonomous coding agents. Why it matters: cheaper, performant coding models could broaden access to AI-driven development helpers and accelerate adoption of agentic workflows — but also raises questions about safety, code quality and integration with enterprise development toolchains.