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What’s New Today: Five stories are shaping the tech and business landscape today. SRMIST and The Hindu will organize Semiconductor Summit 2026 on October 27. Swedish startup Strawberry has launched its AI agent platform and is preparing a Series A round. New data shows which industries are hiring more MBA graduates. Strategy’s bitcoin buying may have slowed as buybacks take priority. Google has rolled out Universal Cart, an AI-powered shopping feature that tracks price drops.
Semiconductor Summit 2026: SRMIST and The Hindu will hold the summit on October 27. Industry leaders, researchers, policymakers, academics and students will take part. They will discuss developments in chip technology and the challenges and opportunities shaping India’s semiconductor ecosystem.
Summit focus areas: The agenda covers chip design, advanced manufacturing and artificial intelligence (AI). It also includes defense applications, geopolitical competition, talent development and next-generation semiconductor technologies.
Strawberry’s platform launch: Strawberry has launched version 1.0 of its AI agent platform, built for non-technical teams such as sales, recruiting, customer support, and marketing. The startup has USD 6 million in funding from EQT and General Catalyst. The platform is free to try.
Industry leaders, researchers, policymakers, academics and students will participate in the summit to discuss developments in semiconductor technology and the challenges and opportunities shaping India’s semiconductor ecosystem.
Chip design, advanced manufacturing, artificial intelligence (AI), defence applications, geopolitical competition, talent development and next-generation semiconductor technologies will be the focus areas at the summit.
Strawberry, a startup with USD 6 million in funding from EQT and General Catalyst, has launched 1.0 of its AI agent platform built for non-technical teams, such as sales, recruiting, customer support, and marketing.
It is free to try and lets users and teams create their own virtual colleagues, called AI companions. According to Strawberry, unlike chatbots such as Claude and ChatGPT, which take a prompt and complete a task, companions work like real colleagues, alongside people and not instead of them. It operates as a browser, where a team's context, workflows, and logins already live. A companion remembers how your team works and gets better the more you work together, because it is connected to all of that context.
An MBA offers a wide range of career options from finance and marketing to consulting, technology, and business operations. With the changes in hiring patterns across industries, choosing the right specialization and B-school is just as important as the entrance score itself.
This is evidenced by India's employment landscape. As per Naukri JobSpeak, overall white-collar recruitment increased 2% compared to the previous year during September 2026, whereas AI and machine learning jobs showed a growth of 20%, and automotive recruitment rose by 11%. On the other hand, IT and software services, FMCG, and pharma/biotech witnessed a 4% decrease.
Strategy chairman Michael Saylor did not share his usual Sunday bitcoin chart this week. Bitcoin watchers read that as a sign that Strategy (MSTR), the largest corporate holder of bitcoin, may have paused its buying. Saylor was active on X on Sunday: he described bitcoin as “the moat” in a reply to Jack Dorsey. But the chart that usually comes before a purchase announcement did not appear. A missing chart is a signal, not a confirmation. The company’s Monday filing will settle the question, and its third-quarter results follow on Thursday.
Keeping track of product prices across multiple shopping websites can be time-consuming. A laptop may be cheaper at one retailer, while a pair of headphones is available at a better price somewhere else. Add changing discounts, limited stock, and promotional offers to the mix, and finding the right time to buy becomes even harder.
Google is trying to simplify this process with Universal Cart, an AI-powered shopping feature that brings saved products, price alerts, and shopping tools together. Launched in the United States across Google Search and the Gemini app, the feature helps shoppers keep track of items from different retailers without repeatedly searching for them.
