Author: Chris Anu

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said on Tuesday the company was well placed to navigate a shift in the artificial intelligence industry, in which businesses are moving from training AI models to getting detailed answers from them. Huang, speaking at the company’s annual software developer conference in San Jose, California, defended the company’s lead in selling costly AI chips to customers, which has recently been questioned by investors after China’s DeepSeek made a competitive chatbot with allegedly fewer AI chips. But his presentation failed to reassure investors. Nvidia shares fell 3.4%. The chip index closed down 1.6%. The computation we need…

ITWeb news editor Admire Moyo. While South Africa continues to walk a diplomatic tight rope with the US, American tech giants are continuing to make solid investments in Africa’s biggest economy.South Africa’s relationship with the US reached a new low last week, when the US State Department in Washington expelled South African ambassador to the US, Ebrahim Rasool, for allegedly launching a “diplomatic attack on the US that could not be ignored”.On Friday, US secretary of state Marco Rubio declared Rasool “persona non grata” after remarks he made regarding the Trump administration during a discussion.The diplomatic tiff set off after…

MultiChoice this week relaxed its limitation on the number of concurrent streams available via its DStv Stream and Showmax plans. Streaming companies around the world, including Netflix, have been cracking down on concurrent streaming in an effort to stop password sharing, which had become rampant in the industry as consumers sought to cut costs. The strategy has worked well for some, like Netflix, but arguably not as well for others. Still, the ability to stream concurrently to multiple devices is in high demand by consumers, not only because they want to share their password credentials with friends, but because many…

Ian Engelbrecht, system engineering manager: Africa, Veeam. ITWeb, in partnership with Veeam, is running a survey on data resilience readiness among businesses in Africa. The survey aims to explore just how prepared these businesses are to recover from a ransomware or cyber attack, as well as the resources they have at their disposal to help them recover.Brendan Widlake, the Regional Director for Africa at Veeam, says, “Data is at the heart of businesses. It’s the most important asset.“However, the amount of data has absolutely exploded over the past few years. Data touches every aspect of operations, the customer database, internal…

Fireworks erupted at the high court in Pretoria on Wednesday as the standoff between e.tv and communications minister Solly Malatsi over analogue television switch-off at the end of this month continues. The legal team representing Malatsi first refused to present to the court in their allotted timeslot on Tuesday, arguing that they needed more time to prepare their arguments. This was disputed by Malatsi’s opponents in the case – e.tv, Media Monitoring Africa and the SOS Coalition – and questioned by the judge, who highlighted the urgency of the matter given that the court has less than 10 days to…

Google’s products and services contributed R118 billion to SA’s economy in 2023. Tech giant Google has committed to help create 300 000 jobs in South Africa, through its ecosystem, by 2030. This was announced yesterday in Johannesburg, at the official launch of its first Africa-based cloud region, which went live in January 2024.At the event, Google announced an additional investment in its cloud region and skills development initiatives in SA. The latest round of investment forms part of Google’s commitment to invest $1 billion over five years, to boost Africa’s digital transformation. Its investment was first announced in 2021.Speaking at…

Google was warned to step in line with the EU’s Big Tech rules or risk hefty fines as part of a two-pronged escalation against Silicon Valley that risks further inflaming tensions with US President Donald Trump. The European Commission chastised Google for allegedly breaching the bloc’s landmark Digital Markets Act by favouring in-house services across its sprawling search empire and for preventing app developers from steering consumers to offers outside of its Play store. Meanwhile, Apple was told it must loosen the shackles on its prized iPhone operating system to comply with the law, approved last year to bolster the…

Nompumelelo Mokou, iOCO independent non-executive director. iOCO, formerly known as EOH, has appointed Nompumelelo Mokou as an independent non-executive director.She is former managing director of Dimension Data Southern Africa, which has rebranded to NTT Data.Mokou, who was appointed to the MD role at Dimension Data in April 2021, confirmed her resignation from the systems integrator in March last year.In a statement, iOCO says Mokou brings a wealth of experience from her career at Dimension Data since 2016.It adds that Mokou was chairperson of the audit committee of the Culture, Arts, Tourism, Hospitality and Sports SETA from 2015 to 2019, and…

Google has launched a “cloud region” in Johannesburg, its first in Africa, as it chases its US rivals, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services, in building data centre infrastructure in South Africa. Although the data centre “region” has already been operational for more than a year, Google on Wednesday held an industry event in Johannesburg to showcase the investment to customers and partners. The event came two weeks after Microsoft vice chairman and president Brad Smith shared a stage with President Cyril Ramaphosa in Johannesburg to announce that the software giant would invest a further R5.4-billion in new data centre infrastructure…

Nvidia has unveiled a foundation model to boost to robot reasoning and skills in humanoid robots. US-based chipmaker Nvidia this week unveiled a portfolio of new technologies, including a customisable foundation model for generalised humanoid reasoning and skills.Named Nvidia Isaac GR00T N1, the foundation model software was unveiled at the company’s annual developer conference in San Jose, California.In a statement, Nvidia says GR00T N1 is the first of a family of fully-customisable models it will pre-train and release to worldwide robotics developers. The software is available now. “The age of generalist robotics is here,” says Jensen Huang, founder and CEO…