US, Japan reopen borders; Spotify founder Daniel Ek invests in Helsing; and a chat with Abhishek Bansal, CEO of Shadowfax

America and Japan have reopened their borders, easing entry bans imposed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The US has reopened its borders to fully vaccinated travellers, ending restrictions imposed by former President Donald Trump in March 2020 that had affected non-US citizens from over 30 countries, BBC reported on Monday. Ending a de facto ban on foreign visitors due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Japan will allow business visitors, international students, and technical trainees to enter the country, Nikkei reported on Monday. The mandatory self-isolation for fully vaccinated business travellers could be as few as three days, according to the report. Daniel Ek, the Swedish entrepreneur founder of Spotify, who is now also famous for taking on Apple and Google for the way they run their app stores, has made the first investment from the € 1 billion ($1.16 billion) fund he started last year. Ek’s funding vehicle, Prima Materia, has invested € 100 million in Helsing, a defence tech startup that produces live maps of battlefields, Financial Times reported. Helsing’s AI software will integrate data from infrared, video, sonar and radio frequencies data from sensors on military vehicles, to create a real-time picture of battlefields, according to the report. IBM has opened a client innovation centre in Mysuru, the eighth such facility in India, the company said in a press release. The innovation centre is part of IBM Consulting and specialises in design, software engineering, and analytics. IBM aims to hire more than 10,000 staff for its innovation centres, in the current quarter globally. H2O.ai, the AI cloud provider in Silicon Valley, has closed $100 million in Series E funding led by Australia’s largest bank, Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) with participation from Pivot Investment Partners. Founded by Indian American entrepreneur Sri Ambati, H2O.ai has now raised about $250 million. The latest investment values the company at $1.7 billion, H2O said in a press release. Existing investors include Nexus Venture Partners, Crane Venture Partners, Goldman Sachs and NVIDIA. The company’s AI cloud is used by enterprise customers around the world, and it will use the latest funding to expand its operations. (3:21) Interview: Abhishek Bansal, founder and CEO of Shadowfax on his vision for a comprehensive gig economy platform Last-mile delivery is a rapidly growing segment of the logistics and supply chain industry, around the world. The Covid-19 pandemic accelerated the demand for quick deliveries of online purchases, food and medicines. Today 30-minute deliveries are not uncommon and some startups are looking at even quicker fulfilment of orders. That said, Abhishek Bansal, founder and CEO of Shadowfax, a fast-growing third-party logistics startup, thinks that the picture is much bigger than just deliveries. And to that end, Shadowfax has overhauled its app, used by delivery personnel across the country to find their next gig. In today's interview, Abhishek talks about his vision for a gig economy platform where people can find short term work ranging from delivery jobs to even software development.