Tech

Google CEO Sundar Pichai nears billionaire status powered by AI boom

Published

2 years ago

May 1, 2024

Alphabet Inc.’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, stands on the brink of a remarkable milestone for a tech executive who didn’t found the company: reaching billionaire status.

Since assuming leadership of Google in 2015, Pichai, 51, has steered the company to extraordinary growth, with its stock skyrocketing over 400%, far surpassing major market indices like the S&P 500 and Nasdaq. Following an exceptional first-quarter performance, highlighted by robust growth in its cloud computing division fueled by artificial intelligence, Google’s stock soared to record highs. Moreover, the company announced its inaugural dividend, marking a significant moment in its history.

The remarkable surge in Google’s valuation, coupled with substantial stock awards, has propelled Pichai’s wealth close to the billion-dollar mark, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, though Alphabet declined to comment on this matter.

Pichai’s journey from humble beginnings in Chennai, India, to the upper echelons of Silicon Valley is a testament to his tenacity and talent. Raised in modest circumstances, with limited luxuries such as a TV or car, Pichai developed an early passion for technology, ignited by the family’s first rotary telephone. This curiosity, combined with his father’s occupation as an electrical engineer, laid the foundation for his future success in the tech industry.

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Tech

Sri Lanka leads South Asia in AI job growth, ranks second in ChatGPT usage: World Bank

Published

3 months ago

October 27, 2025

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Sri Lanka has emerged as one of South Asia’s most AI-exposed economies, with strong growth in artificial intelligence–related jobs but also mounting risks of job displacement, according to the World Bank’s South Asia Development Update: Jobs, AI, and Trade (October 2025).

The report’s latest chapter, “Artificial Intelligence, Real Impact: Labor Market Implications of AI Adoption in South Asia,” finds that Sri Lanka and Bhutan have the highest AI exposure in the region, reflecting their relatively skilled and educated workforces.

“Within South Asia, exposure varies by country: Nepal has the lowest average exposure, while Bhutan and Sri Lanka exhibit the highest exposure rates, reflecting their relatively more skilled and educated workforces,” the report states.

Tech

BYD breaks record for world’s fastest car

Published

4 months ago

September 26, 2025

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BYD’s Yangwang U9 “Xtreme” supercar recorded a blistering top speed of 496.22km/h (308 miles per hour) at a test track in Germany earlier this month, the Chinese EV maker said.

That’s a record for a production car, handily beating the 490.5 km/h (304.7 mph) set by Bugatti’s Chiron Super Sport in 2019 and marking the first time the title of world’s fastest car has been held by an EV.

The Xtreme is a high-performance version of Yangwang U9, BYD’s pothole-jumping hypercar, which costs around $233,000 in China.

BYD said just 30 units of the ultra-fast variant, which features an upgraded powertrain and battery system, will be made.

It means that as well as boasting the world’s cheapest EVs, China is now home to the fastest.

Tech

Sri Lanka launches largest Sinhala LLM with 10 million sentences (SinLlama)

Published

5 months ago

August 30, 2025

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Research students at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Moratuwa have developed the country’s first large-scale large language model (LLM) that exclusively include Sinhala, a breakthrough in advancing local language computing.

This project was jointly supervised by Dr Surangika Ranathunga (Massey University, New Zealand), Dr Nisansa de Silva (University of Moratuwa) and Dr Rishemjit Kaur (Central Scientific Instruments Organisation, India).

The model, named “SinLlama,” was built by continually pre-training Llama-3-8B with nearly 10 million Sinhala sentences. According to the research team, SinLlama is the largest Sinhala LLM to date and has already outperformed Llama-3-8B on Sinhala text classification benchmarks.