Kenyan fashion e-commerce startup ShopZetu is set to add beauty and home décor categories to its portfolio, in response to the growing needs of the young and style-conscious women in Africa. This is as it currently scales regionally over the next few months while working to attract international fashion brands, and more than triple the number of vendors on its platform to 1,000.
Altum Lab, the Chilean AI startup, has closed a deal with the World Seed Bank to develop a model that predicts seed germination to facilitate intelligent storage and management, opening up new opportunities in the agricultural industry. Through Bruna, its platform specializing in advanced technological services to solve common industrial problems, the company will create a prediction that assesses the probability of seed germination while harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to drive sustainable agriculture and strengthen food security.
The Fashion Kingdom (TFK), the leading curated fashion marketplace in Egypt, has acquired direct-to-consumer (D2C) fashion brand Opio to create a powerhouse fashion group. A marketplace offering access to fashion, beauty and home accessories, with 360 value proposition for brands, TFK was launched in July 2020 and raised a US$2.6 million seed round in August 2022, to accelerate its growth.
Nearly one-third of major news publishers have blocked generative AI tools from reading their content. But that’s a drastic measure which could also exclude their results from conventional search engines. Microsoft has just given publishers the option to block access by Bing Chat without also removing their content from search results. We’ll see if competitors do the same.