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Startups bet on AI for leaner future

consortium, they added. Stripe and Advent are contributing US$17 billion in equity for the offer, one of the people said. PayPal, Advent, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, and Stripe declined to comment. Under the offer, which was submitted earlier this month, Stripe and Advent would jointly own PayPal, with each holding an equal stake rather than breaking up the company, Reuters previously reported. But they have also considered possible remedies should it run afoul of antitrust regulators, one of the sources said. That potentially involves separating PayPal’s Braintree business or other assets and transferring them to Advent, which could then combine those assets with its payments investments, including Nuvei, the person said. Despite PayPal’s reservations over the current proposal, the sources said the consortium has emerged as the most serious bidder for PayPal and it remains interested in reaching an agreement. While they are seeking to move quickly, negotiations are likely to take time, the sources said. Block, Stripe and Advent first approached PayPal together in April, but Block exited the consortium before Stripe and Advent submitted their latest offer. Block did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Investors will be watching PayPal’s July 28 earnings report for signs that growth in its core checkout business is stabilizing after the company earlier this year issued a weaker-than-expected outlook and warned of slowing momentum in the segment. Privately held Stripe enlisted Advent as an equity partner because funding the entire equity portion of a deal on its own would be difficult, according to the person familiar with the bid. Advent has been an active investor in the payments sector, with a track record of acquiring and investing in companies across the industry, including Worldpay, Vantiv and, more recently, Nuvei. quarters – even as senior employment kept rising. “I think there’s a lot of hesitation in hiring right now,” said Ian Amit, CEO of the cybersecurity startup Gomboc AI. “I’m hearing of a lot of firms that are interviewing multiple candidates across the board but are not pulling the trigger on actual hiring decisions.” Not everyone thinks squeezing out juniors is wise. Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman has called the idea of replacing junior developers with AI “one of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard,” warning that the industry risks denying itself the next generation of leaders. Yet already computer science enrollment has begun to slide – dropping 6% across the University of California system and falling at two thirds of computing programs nationwide, according to the Computing Research Association.

industry newsletter The Pragmatic Engineer , 75% reported using Claude Code. A quarter of startups in Y Combinator’s Winter 2025 batch were built on code that was 95% AI generated, according to managing partner Jared Friedman. Lauer said Giftory’s roughly 30 employees get a premium AI subscription costing about US$200 (RM814) a month – “peanuts” stacked against an average salary of US$100,000 a year, and cheap enough to make offshoring “uncompetitive.” Haitham Mengad, co-founder of Stems Labs, said he took a similar approach. “We already had a pretty lean team and very talented engineers, so the approach I took was, let’s do more with the people that we have.” Lindsay Euller, vice-president of customer success at the software company Espresa, said her team’s AI

NEW YORK: PayPal’s board sees a US$53 billion (RM216 billion) takeover bid by rival Stripe and private equity firm Advent International as undervaluing the company and facing regulatory and financing hurdles, a person familiar with the matter said, potentially setting the stage for negotiations over the future of the US payments giant. PayPal has not formally responded to the proposal, two other sources said. The consortium’s bid comes as PayPal, founded in the late 1990s, has struggled in recent years to compete against rivals like Apple Pay and Google Pay, with management trying to revive its flagging share price in the face of slowing growth. Combining Stripe and PayPal, the most widely used payment platforms for internet merchants, would create one of the world’s largest global online payments companies, processing some US$3.7 trillion of annual volume. PayPal’s board is evaluating the bid – and the possibility that other offers could emerge – against management’s turnaround strategy, the person said. Its early view is that while the US$60.50 per share offer represents a premium to the company’s recent share price, it does not fully reflect the potential value the company could create over the coming years if management successfully executes its strategy, the source said. PayPal rose 2% on Thursday to US$56.73. The board is also weighing factors beyond price, including the certainty of financing, potential regulatory hurdles and what could be a lengthy timeline to complete any transaction, the source added. It is scheduled to hold additional meetings, the source said. The details of the board’s view are reported here for the first time. The consortium, meanwhile, is trying to address some of these issues. JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley have provided the bidders a roughly US$50 billion financing package, two other people familiar with the bid said. The two banks also serve as advisers to the use is saving “millions of dollars a year.” “I think we’ll get to a point where if I have to request headcount, I’ll be asked, ‘How are you optimizing AI?’” before any new hire is approved, Euller told AFP. But the efficiency gains reshaping startups are casting a long shadow over the next generation of programmers. A Stanford Digital Economy Lab study analyzing payroll data from millions of US workers found that employment among 22- to 25-year olds in occupations most exposed to AI – including software development – declined nearly 20% from a late 2022 peak. Harvard researchers analyzing resume and job posting data covering some 62 million US workers across 285,000 firms found that junior employment at companies adopting generative AI dropped roughly 9% relative to non-adopters within six

knowledge whatsoever of the workflows” are “a lot less appealing for an organisation like ours.” It is a calculus playing out across the tech industry as a new generation of AI-powered coding assistants transforms how software gets built. Companies using tools like Anthropic’s Claude Code are letting small teams build products that once required far larger workforces, but also squeezing out the entry-level jobs that young programmers have relied on to launch their careers. These programs – which also include OpenAI’s Codex – have completely flipped the script on programming, turning coders from line-by-line typists into “project managers” who can use AI to instantly write, test and fix software with just a simple text prompt. The switch to AI coding is undeniable. Among developers at small startups surveyed by the

The project is part of a broader push to modernise one of the world’s largest rail networks while reducing carbon emissions. The 10-coach train runs along an 89km route between Jind and Sonipat in India’s northern state of Haryana, powered by a 1,200-kilowatt hydrogen fuel cell propulsion system. Officials described the system as the world’s most powerful for a train. Hydrogen trains use fuel cells to generate electricity by combining hydrogen and oxygen, emitting only water and steam. “This is a very significant day in the direction of self-reliant India and sustainable development,“ Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who flagged off the inaugural journey, said in a social media post. The railway ministry said the train was “developed entirely in India”, although senior officials told reporters that some key components, including the fuel cells, were imported. The ministry also inaugurated what it described as the country’s largest railway hydrogen storage and refuelling facility in Jind, with a capacity of some 3,000 kilograms, to “support hydrogen-powered train operations”. WASHINGTON: When Eric Lauer needs to hire at Giftory, the online gift-giving platform he runs, he’s no longer looking for eager young coders fresh out of college. He wants “mid-career people who are lazy in a smart way” – experienced developers he calls architects who know how to wield AI coding tools to multiply their output rather than write every line from scratch. “To be an architect, you need that previous world experience, and you need to know all the workflows,” Lauer told AFP. Candidates with “no o Smaller tech teams are becoming the norm, reducing jobs for new graduates

India rolls out first hydrogen-powered train JIND: India launched its first hydrogen powered train yesterday, joining a small group of nations testing the technology as part of efforts to decarbonise rail transport and cut dependence on fossil fuels.

PayPal board sees Stripe-Advent offer as inadequate, sources say

India launched its first hydrogen-powered train yesterday, joining a small group of nations testing the technology as part of efforts to decarbonise rail transport and cut dependence on fossil fuels. – AFPPIX

The pilot project cost around US$12 million (RM48.8 million), according to a senior railway official who acknowledged it was significantly more expensive than a comparable conventional service. But he said costs were expected to fall as the technology matures. With the launch, India joins countries such as Germany, Japan, China and the US that are testing or operating hydrogen-powered trains. India’s railways have undergone a major transformation since the first passenger steam train puffed out in 1853 from Mumbai.

In recent years, New Delhi has pumped billions of dollars in investment aimed at upgrading infrastructure, improving safety and expanding capacity. The vast network carried 7.41 billion passengers and 1.67 billion tonnes of freight last year, official data shows. India has also introduced its domestically designed Vande Bharat trains, which can reach speeds of up to 180kph. At the same time, the country is building its first high-speed rail line using Japanese Shinkansen technology. – AFP

S. Korea-US team unveils robot that dresses people DAEJEON: A team of South Korean and US researchers has unveiled a robotic technology that allows a person to suit up without using their hands or aid from others, with potential for applications in chip cleanrooms and emergency services. The technology developed by researchers at South Korea’s KAIST and Stanford University uses soft and flexible “vines” powered by air pressure embedded in clothing. When pressurised, the vines glide the fabric up close to the wearer’s body like an ivy plant climbing on a structure, even if the person does not remain standing still. “When I was riding a bicycle, it started to rain ... and I thought it would be helpful if a raincoat could be put on automatically (as I ride),“ said KAIST postdoctoral researcher Kim Nam Gyun, the lead author of a paper on the technology. “The vine robot stays close to the person and dresses them by turning the clothing inside out as it moves, allowing it to climb stably along the shape of the body,“ Kim said, adding it takes about 10 seconds to put on a full suit. A key to the technology’s potential is it does not require the wearer to stand motionless Inspired by climbing ivy, the robot advances by growing at its tip rather than shifting its whole body, enabling stable movement along curved surfaces, said Ryu Jee-Hwan, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at KAIST. “It can pass through narrow gaps, grow while adapting to the shape of its surrounding environment, and move regardless of whether the surface is slippery, sticky, or sloped,“ he said. – Reuters and it works without a complex control algorithm, the researchers said.