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New Delhi | June 17: EbixCash World Money, a flagship subsidiary of Eraaya Lifespaces Limited, today announced the expansion of its payments, remittance and forex network to 2,250 Indian cities/town/villages, up from 2,143 a year ago. The expansion adds over 573 new retail touchpoints, with 89% of new merchant additions coming from Tier 2 and Tier 3 towns.

The newly added network spans key regional clusters including Punjab and Kerala, where remittance-led transactions continue to anchor demand, as well as Gurgaon and Pune, which are seeing increased activity across SME payments and outbound forex usage. Southern markets such as Chennai, Bengaluru, and Coimbatore are witnessing stronger adoption of hybrid payment models that combine digital interfaces with assisted service delivery.

Neighbourhood retail points are emerging as critical financial access hubs. Kirana stores and local outlets are enabling use cases ranging from assisted remittances for migrant workers to everyday payment acceptance for small businesses, while also supporting first-time users as they enter formal digital financial systems. Unlike metros, where usage is largely app-driven, these markets continue to rely on assisted journeys, particularly for higher-value or more complex transactions.

Commenting on the development, Mr. T. C. Guruprasad, CEO & Managing Director – Payments Solutions, EbixCash, said, “The next phase of digital transaction growth is being led by non-metro India, but the path to adoption here is structurally different. Assisted models are playing a critical role in building trust and enabling usage, especially for more complex financial needs like remittances and forex. Our network is designed to leverage local retail infrastructure as the interface for digital services, allowing us to scale access while staying relevant to how these markets transact.”

Vikas Garg, Chairman, Ebix Group, added, “In a market as diverse as India, distribution will continue to be a key differentiator in financial services. Digital alone cannot address the last mile at scale, particularly in emerging markets. The ability to integrate physical infrastructure with digital capabilities will define how effectively companies can build trust, drive usage, and scale sustainably across the next phase of growth.”

Looking ahead, the company plans to further expand its presence across emerging markets, with a continued focus on strengthening merchant access, scaling cross-border payment capabilities, and deepening its forex and transaction-led service offerings across India’s regional economies.

ZURICH / PARIS, June 17. The technologies now driving the global economy, from advanced computing to artificial intelligence and robotics, are built patiently, over decades of sustained investment and deep scientific groundwork. Increasingly that work traces back to a country a fraction of the size of the giants it competes with. 

Switzerland now directs a greater share of its venture capital to deep tech than any other nation, and commits more per head than any country in Europe, placing it among the top three worldwide. The finding anchors the Swiss Deep Tech Report 2026, published today by Deep Tech Nation Switzerland, Founderful, Kickfund, Startupticker.ch, and Dealroom.co, and launched at VivaTech in Paris. 

The report sets out where the next decade of frontier technology will be engineered. The world’s most valuable companies are built on data centers, artificial intelligence and robotic automation, and Switzerland is among the few countries worldwide where that work is researched and commercialized at the frontier. What has changed is that its companies now stay to scale, and the world has taken notice. “For the first time, the companies spinning out of ETH and EPFL are staying, scaling and attracting serious capital,” says Jean-Philippe Fricker, Co-Founder and Chief System Architect of Cerebras Systems. The country’s international standing now matches the strength of its ecosystem. 

Five findings that put Switzerland at the forefront of deep tech innovation

The pipeline is shifting toward the sectors that dominate global capital. AI and machine learning now account for one in four newly founded Swiss deep tech companies, more than double their previous share. Beyond startup creation, Switzerland has the highest density of AI researchers globally, twice that of the UK and the US. Robotics is moving even faster relative to peers: Switzerland has created 3.5 times more venture-backed robotics startups per capita since 2020 than the United States, and 5 times more than the UK. In Future of Compute, 2026 is already a record funding year, and Switzerland boasts 7 times more patents per capita than the European average, driven by its world-leading microelectronics and high-precision sensor industries. 

The world’s most deep-tech-focused venture market. 63% of all Swiss venture capital flows to deep tech, the highest share of any country, ahead of China and the United States and nearly double the share of Germany and the UK, and well ahead of France. 

First in Europe on intensity, top three globally. At $1,470 invested per capita, Switzerland commits more to deep tech per head than any country in Europe. Worldwide, that places it among the top three nations alongside Israel and the United States. 

Funding is accelerating. Swiss deep tech funding has grown roughly fivefold since 2015 to reach a record $2.6B in 2025. 

The strongest growth is still ahead. ETH Zurich and EPFL Lausanne are Europe’s leading universities for new deep tech spinouts. Building on a leading position, the two have extended their lead since 2023, and that cohort is only now reaching the seed-to-Series-A window, the stage at which company value and capital raised compound most sharply. 

Momentum on the ground 

Some of the clearest signals do not yet appear in the funding data. Among the report’s co-authors are several of the country’s most active deep tech investors, who describe a change in the character of the ecosystem over the past year. The world’s top funds no longer need persuading to look at Switzerland; they are arriving on their own initiative. “The energy and talent dynamism reminded me of what we saw in Israel and the UK in the early 2000s,” says Saul Klein, Founding Partner of LocalGlobe. 

Global technology leaders are expanding their computing, robotics and AI research presence in the country. The pipeline feeding that activity runs straight from the universities. “At EPFL we see it every day: the discoveries made in our laboratories become the deep tech companies of tomorrow,” says Anna Fontcuberta i Morral, President of EPFL. And as deal flow deepens, founders are growing more selective about the investors they choose to work with. 

“Since we launched in 2019, we’ve never seen such a high density of ambitious entrepreneurs tackling globally relevant tech challenges as right now. The pace at which these founders execute reminds me of what people speak about when they refer to SF. In the coming decade Zurich will become home to at least a dozen global category leaders, I’m sure of that.”

— Alex Stöckl, Partner at Founderful and Swiss Deep Tech Report co-author

Where the opportunity sits 

Foreign investors supply 88% of Swiss deep tech funding at rounds of $100M and above, against 75% across Europe, while domestic capital falls to just 12% at late stage. In a top-ranked ecosystem, late-stage capital remains underweight relative to the quality of the companies being built, leaving clear room for new investors to enter early. 

“We built one of the world’s most deep tech-focused economies without a franc of public venture capital. In Germany, France and the UK, much of the late-stage money is state-backed through Bpifrance, British Patient Capital or the German Future Fund. In Switzerland that barely exists, and yet the world’s best investors now come here on their own initiative, with some setting up shop. No public money had to write the cheque to make this real.” 

— Wanja Humanes, Partner at Kickfund and Swiss Deep Tech Report co-author 

What happens next 

The seed-to-Series-A cohort now moving through the ecosystem is the largest Switzerland has produced, and it is only now reaching the stage where company value and capital raised compound most sharply. Deep tech funding has already grown roughly fivefold since 2015 to a record $2.6B. The companies are staying, and the funds are arriving on their own. The report sets out, sector by sector, the leaders and the startups most worth watching, and invites the investors who would rather arrive early than late. 

Among the fastest-known AI companies, Plaud stands out as a rare hardware-enabled AI company in a cohort dominated by software-only players

SAN FRANCISCO,  June 17: Plaud, the company building real-world AI interface for professionals, today announced it has scaled from $1M to $100M in ARR within two years, placing it among the fastest AI companies globally to reach the milestone. Plaud is the only hardware-enabled AI company in a cohort otherwise dominated by software-only players, and now serves more than 2 million professionals across 170+ countries.

The fastest AI growth stories have, until now, belonged almost entirely to software-native companies: AI coding tools, enterprise workflow agents, and other SaaS products scaling behind screens and keyboards. Plaud’s growth represents a different model — recurring AI software scaled through a real-world physical interface, with devices (Plaud Note, Plaud Note Pro, Plaud NotePin S) acting as the entry point into human conversations, capturing the upstream, lossless, source-of-truth context.

Most AI today operates after the fact, on summaries, documents, prompts typed from memory. The intelligence that actually drives decisions comes from real-world conversations, before any prompt is written, before any keyboard is touched. When conversation fades, that intelligence decays. Not just information — intent, nuance, the reasoning behind decisions. Plaud is the post-screen, post-smartphone interface built to capture it at the rawest form.

“Most AI companies have scaled through software behind a screen. We took a different path.” said Nathan Xu, co-founder and CEO of Plaud. “The conversations that actually move things forward don’t happen on a keyboard. We built the interface for the post-screen world. And the market validated it.”

As AI moves from screen-based tools toward interfaces and agents that need trusted context to act reliably, real-world conversations are becoming a critical data layer. Plaud is also expanding beyond individual note-taking into team and developer workflows. Plaud Team brings conversation intelligence into collaborative work, while MCP and workflow integrations allow Plaud to connect with the broader agent ecosystem — turning meetings, calls, and in-person conversations into follow-ups, shared knowledge, and actions across the tools professionals already use.

More than 3,000 industry leaders gather in the Motor City to advance intelligent transportation 

DETROIT, Mich. June 17: The ITS America Conference & Expo 2026 brought breakthrough technologies and real-world solutions to Detroit, drawing more than 3,000 industry professionals from 46 states, and the District of Columbia together to advance safer, smarter, and more connected mobility worldwide. Organized in partnership by RX Global and ITS America, the four-day event at Huntington Place united the industry’s most forward-thinking companies and global leaders around solutions spanning artificial intelligence, connected transportation, cybersecurity, data analytics, digital infrastructure, and autonomous vehicles. 

This year’s conference, themed “Empowering Innovation,” featured more than 100 conference sessions spanning four days, 25 live demonstrations, 170+ exhibitors and sponsors, and an unprecedented outdoor demonstration program that placed attendees directly inside Detroit’s connected transportation corridors. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer helped wrap up the conference with closing remarks, then met with industry leaders and Clinton High School STEM students on the exhibit hall floor. 

Detroit served as more than a backdrop. As the birthplace of American automotive manufacturing and home to 1.7 million vehicles produced annually, the city gave the intelligent transportation community a living laboratory to showcase how the industry’s most advanced technologies are being deployed on real roads, in real time. From the 45-mile I-94 Freeway Experience connecting downtown Detroit to Ann Arbor, to the four-mile M-1 Intelligent Woodward Experience featuring 31 vehicle-to-everything (V2X)-equipped intersections and autonomous vehicle shuttles, attendees experienced the full potential of connected transportation firsthand.

“The technologies on display here, including AI-powered traffic management and V2X-connected corridors, represent the very innovation our industry has championed for decades,” said Laura Chace, President and CEO of ITS America. “What we witnessed in Detroit shows that bringing people from across public, private, and research sectors together builds lasting partnerships and leads to safer, smarter, and more connected transportation.”

The conference program brought national leaders to center stage for two landmark plenary sessions. On June 10, Sean McMaster, Administrator of the Federal Highway Administration at the U.S. Department of Transportation, joined public and private sector leaders to reflect on the industry’s 35-year evolution and chart the course for the next generation of mobility. On June, 11, Miovision sponsored a plenary session, led by Laura Chace and Kurtis McBride, CEO and Co-founder of Miovision, featuring key transportation executives and focused on turning bold ideas into measurable real-world outcomes. State DOT roundtables also provided transportation leaders with a dedicated platform to exchange implementation strategies and share lessons learned from the field.

“ITS America Conference & Expo 2026 delivered an experience unlike any other,” said Jaime McAuley, Event Vice President, ITS America Events, RX Global. “The demonstration program in Detroit set a new standard, reaching far beyond the show floor and into the city itself. Connecting the ITS community to real, deployed technology along Detroit’s most iconic corridors gave every attendee something they could not experience anywhere else.”

The 2026 show floor introduced two new dedicated zones that reflected the industry’s most urgent priorities. The inaugural ITS StartUps Zone gave emerging transportation companies a platform alongside the industry’s most established players, connecting new voices in the sector with the agencies, investors, and partners needed to advance their technologies from concept to deployment. 

The new Cybersecurity & Data Zone brought together 10 exhibitors, including Palo Alto Networks, Google, and 360 Network Solutions, LLC, delivering hands-on workshops, cutting-edge solutions, and expert sessions focused on protecting connected vehicles, securing smart infrastructure, and strengthening the resilience of transportation systems nationwide. 

To demonstrate the benefits of using drone technology to deliver supplies to emergency responders, Blueflite staged a series of deliveries at the outdoor demo area. ITS America President and CEO Laura Chace, U.S. DOT representatives, Michigan DOT and ITS Michigan received deliveries of hats and koozies, and ITS Korea and the Korean Delegation received invitations to ITS World Congress 2026.

“As a former chair of ITS America, I know firsthand what this event means to the transportation community, and hosting it in Utah is something we take seriously,” said Carlos Braceras, Commissioner of the Utah Department of Transportation. “Salt Lake City is a city that embraces bold ideas, and the Salt Palace Convention Center will give transportation leaders from around the world the stage they need to share the technologies and solutions shaping the next generation of mobility. We cannot wait to see you in April 2027.” 

The Future Leaders Program, sponsored by Southwest Research Institute, challenged students and young professionals to explore artificial intelligence’s role in transforming transportation, connecting rising talent directly with industry pioneers throughout the four-day event.