Amazon starts $10mln Machine Learning scholarship; US to quiz crypto executives; Microsoft releases Teams for SMBs; CRED buys Happay

At its re:Invent conference, Amazon Web Services announced two new initiatives to make machine learning more accessible to anyone interested in learning and experimenting with the technology. The first is a $10 million scholarship programme to make AI and ML education accessible to poor students around the world. It will benefit 2000 students every year. Top 500 students, after a first Udacity nano degree, will get a shot at a second one and mentorship from experts at Amazon and Intel. The second initiative is about increasing access to machine learning through Amazon SageMaker Studio Lab, which gives everyone access to a no-cost version of Amazon SageMaker—an AWS service that helps customers build, train, and deploy machine learning models. “The two initiatives we are announcing today are designed to open up educational opportunities in machine learning to make it more widely accessible to anyone interested in the technology,” said Swami Sivasubramanian, Vice President of Amazon Machine Learning at AWS. US lawmakers have called executives of eight major cryptocurrency firms to testify before a congressional committee on December 8, BBC reports, as the government scrutinises the sector further. Coinbase's Alesia Haas, Circle's Jeremy Allaire and Bitfury's Brian Brooks are among the executives asked to testify, according to BBC. This will be the first time companies representing the controversial sector have been questioned in this way.  Square, a fintech company co-founded by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, is changing its name to Block, the company said Wednesday. Dorsey quit Twitter earlier this week, where he was part-time CEO, while also being CEO of Square. “The change to Block acknowledges the company’s growth,” the company said in a press release. “Since its start in 2009, the company has added Cash App, TIDAL, and TBD54566975 as businesses, and the name change creates room for further growth. Block is an overarching ecosystem of many businesses united by their purpose of economic empowerment, and serves many people—individuals, artists, fans, developers, and sellers.” Microsoft has released a cheaper, standalone version of its Teams collaboration software, Teams Essentials, aimed at smaller businesses. “We know how difficult the past 20 months have been for small businesses. They’ve had to demonstrate extreme flexibility to adapt, often with limited access to tools and technology,” Jared Spataro, corporate vice president for Microsoft 365, said in a blogpost. “Teams Essentials is built specifically to meet the unique needs of small businesses, enabling them to thrive in this new era of work. ”Teams Essentials includes group meetings for up to 30 hours, meetings with up to 300 people, and 10GB of cloud storage per user. A subscription will cost $4 in the US, and Rs. 100 in India, per person per month. CRED, a fintech company founded by entrepreneur Kunal Shah, is buying Happay, which provides corporate expense management in India. The acquisition is expected to be a cash and stock deal potentially valuing Happay at approximately $180 million, the company said in a press release. While Happay will operate as a separate entity, the team will work closely with CRED to tap its ecosystem, build distribution, add products and expand the business. Happay’s 230-member team will get all the benefits extended to CRED team members, including its ESOP programme, the company said in the release.