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ServiceNow bets  million on Indian banking software specialist to expand its financial services push | TechCrunch
ServiceNow, the U.S. enterprise software company known for automating workflows like IT service management and HR operations, is betting on an Indian banking software specialist to deepen its push into global financial services.

The company has invested  million in BusinessNext, valuing the 24-year-old Indian firm at 0 million and taking a roughly 5% stake. The deal gives BusinessNext access to ServiceNow’s global sales network as the companies expand their partnership in AI for financial services.







ServiceNow’s investment reflects BusinessNext’s growing profile beyond India. The profitable, Noida-based company, which generated about  million in revenue in its latest financial year, serves more than 70 banks across India, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and the U.S. Its customers include the Reserve Bank of India, the country’s central bank, and State Bank of India and HDFC Bank, which are India’s largest public- and private-sector lenders, respectively.

About half of BusinessNext’s revenue comes from outside India, with overseas markets expected to drive much of its future growth, founder and CEO Nishant Singh said in an interview.

The company chose ServiceNow over potential financial investors to accelerate its expansion by tapping the U.S. software group’s global reach. Singh told TechCrunch that the partnership would help BusinessNext “borrow” its go-to-marker “machinery” — referring to ServiceNow’s sales infrastructure — in markets where it has a limited presence.

“Think of it as a strategic partnership, which is cemented with funding,” he said.

BusinessNext’s software, Singh said, manages customer-facing banking workflows, while ServiceNow is stronger in workflow automation and back-office systems, a combination the two companies plan to sell jointly to financial institutions.


“India’s financial services sector is at an inflection point — institutions are moving from digital experimentation to full-scale AI-led operations,” Kulmeet Bawa, ServiceNow’s group vice president and managing director for India and SAARC, said. He added that the partnership combines ServiceNow’s enterprise workflow platform with BusinessNext’s banking expertise.

Founded in 2002, BusinessNext — known as CRMNext until 2022 — has spent several years building what Singh calls an “autonomous banking” platform, using AI agents to automate banking workflows while keeping sensitive customer data on private AI infrastructure to meet regulatory and privacy requirements.

Singh told TechCrunch that AI was built into the company’s platform from the outset rather than added later. “We actually renamed our company and we kind of rewrote our stack to put that fundamentally at the core,” he said.







BusinessNext employs more than 1,300 people across its operations and was last valued at 1 million in 2021, per private market intelligence platform Tracxn. It has raised more than  million in external funding and counts Avataar Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, and Ascent Capital among its existing investors.

The deal comes as established enterprise software vendors face pressure from customers who are questioning whether traditional SaaS tools are worth paying for when AI-native alternatives are emerging. For ServiceNow, the deal builds out its position in banking by partnering with a company focused on AI-driven banking software, as it expands its enterprise software portfolio through acquisitions, investments, and partnerships.
When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.#ServiceNow #bets #million #Indian #banking #software #specialist #expand #financial #services #push #TechCrunchServiceNow

ServiceNow bets $40 million on Indian banking software specialist to expand its financial services push | TechCrunch

ServiceNow, the U.S. enterprise software company known for automating workflows like IT service management and HR operations, is betting on an Indian banking software specialist to deepen its push into global financial services.

The company has invested $40 million in BusinessNext, valuing the 24-year-old Indian firm at $700 million and taking a roughly 5% stake. The deal gives BusinessNext access to ServiceNow’s global sales network as the companies expand their partnership in AI for financial services.

ServiceNow’s investment reflects BusinessNext’s growing profile beyond India. The profitable, Noida-based company, which generated about $32 million in revenue in its latest financial year, serves more than 70 banks across India, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and the U.S. Its customers include the Reserve Bank of India, the country’s central bank, and State Bank of India and HDFC Bank, which are India’s largest public- and private-sector lenders, respectively.

About half of BusinessNext’s revenue comes from outside India, with overseas markets expected to drive much of its future growth, founder and CEO Nishant Singh said in an interview.

The company chose ServiceNow over potential financial investors to accelerate its expansion by tapping the U.S. software group’s global reach. Singh told TechCrunch that the partnership would help BusinessNext “borrow” its go-to-marker “machinery” — referring to ServiceNow’s sales infrastructure — in markets where it has a limited presence.

“Think of it as a strategic partnership, which is cemented with funding,” he said.

BusinessNext’s software, Singh said, manages customer-facing banking workflows, while ServiceNow is stronger in workflow automation and back-office systems, a combination the two companies plan to sell jointly to financial institutions.

“India’s financial services sector is at an inflection point — institutions are moving from digital experimentation to full-scale AI-led operations,” Kulmeet Bawa, ServiceNow’s group vice president and managing director for India and SAARC, said. He added that the partnership combines ServiceNow’s enterprise workflow platform with BusinessNext’s banking expertise.

Founded in 2002, BusinessNext — known as CRMNext until 2022 — has spent several years building what Singh calls an “autonomous banking” platform, using AI agents to automate banking workflows while keeping sensitive customer data on private AI infrastructure to meet regulatory and privacy requirements.

Singh told TechCrunch that AI was built into the company’s platform from the outset rather than added later. “We actually renamed our company and we kind of rewrote our stack to put that fundamentally at the core,” he said.

BusinessNext employs more than 1,300 people across its operations and was last valued at $181 million in 2021, per private market intelligence platform Tracxn. It has raised more than $60 million in external funding and counts Avataar Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, and Ascent Capital among its existing investors.

The deal comes as established enterprise software vendors face pressure from customers who are questioning whether traditional SaaS tools are worth paying for when AI-native alternatives are emerging. For ServiceNow, the deal builds out its position in banking by partnering with a company focused on AI-driven banking software, as it expands its enterprise software portfolio through acquisitions, investments, and partnerships.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

#ServiceNow #bets #million #Indian #banking #software #specialist #expand #financial #services #push #TechCrunchServiceNow

ServiceNow, the U.S. enterprise software company known for automating workflows like IT service management and HR operations, is betting on an Indian banking software specialist to deepen its push into global financial services.

The company has invested $40 million in BusinessNext, valuing the 24-year-old Indian firm at $700 million and taking a roughly 5% stake. The deal gives BusinessNext access to ServiceNow’s global sales network as the companies expand their partnership in AI for financial services.

ServiceNow’s investment reflects BusinessNext’s growing profile beyond India. The profitable, Noida-based company, which generated about $32 million in revenue in its latest financial year, serves more than 70 banks across India, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and the U.S. Its customers include the Reserve Bank of India, the country’s central bank, and State Bank of India and HDFC Bank, which are India’s largest public- and private-sector lenders, respectively.

About half of BusinessNext’s revenue comes from outside India, with overseas markets expected to drive much of its future growth, founder and CEO Nishant Singh said in an interview.

The company chose ServiceNow over potential financial investors to accelerate its expansion by tapping the U.S. software group’s global reach. Singh told TechCrunch that the partnership would help BusinessNext “borrow” its go-to-marker “machinery” — referring to ServiceNow’s sales infrastructure — in markets where it has a limited presence.

“Think of it as a strategic partnership, which is cemented with funding,” he said.

BusinessNext’s software, Singh said, manages customer-facing banking workflows, while ServiceNow is stronger in workflow automation and back-office systems, a combination the two companies plan to sell jointly to financial institutions.

“India’s financial services sector is at an inflection point — institutions are moving from digital experimentation to full-scale AI-led operations,” Kulmeet Bawa, ServiceNow’s group vice president and managing director for India and SAARC, said. He added that the partnership combines ServiceNow’s enterprise workflow platform with BusinessNext’s banking expertise.

Founded in 2002, BusinessNext — known as CRMNext until 2022 — has spent several years building what Singh calls an “autonomous banking” platform, using AI agents to automate banking workflows while keeping sensitive customer data on private AI infrastructure to meet regulatory and privacy requirements.

Singh told TechCrunch that AI was built into the company’s platform from the outset rather than added later. “We actually renamed our company and we kind of rewrote our stack to put that fundamentally at the core,” he said.

BusinessNext employs more than 1,300 people across its operations and was last valued at $181 million in 2021, per private market intelligence platform Tracxn. It has raised more than $60 million in external funding and counts Avataar Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, and Ascent Capital among its existing investors.

The deal comes as established enterprise software vendors face pressure from customers who are questioning whether traditional SaaS tools are worth paying for when AI-native alternatives are emerging. For ServiceNow, the deal builds out its position in banking by partnering with a company focused on AI-driven banking software, as it expands its enterprise software portfolio through acquisitions, investments, and partnerships.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

Source link
#ServiceNow #bets #million #Indian #banking #software #specialist #expand #financial #services #push #TechCrunch


Not to pick at an irritated scab, but when the eighth and final season of Game of Throneshappened… I, a fan of the series via the show, naively assumed all author George R.R. Martin had to do was pen a different bookend to the series to recover all the lost goodwill of the series. Little did I know that was a touchy subject among book-readers who’ve been tortured by the author’s perpetual procrastination for years. Condolences.

While the same scenario isn’t fully analogous with what’s happened with Netflix’s live-action Alice in Borderland TV show and VIZ Media’s English manga release of the series’ extended epilogue, Alice in Borderland: Retry, the manga more than retroactively makes up for the huge disappointment I felt witnessing the show I loved go full Squid Game in the worst way possible in its final season.

Alice in Borderland is a cutting series in which a man named Arisu gets trapped in a sci-fi death game where a group of sequestered survivors must compete in a litany of challenges in an abandoned city. Think Gantz meets Kaiji. Its rules are cruel, but never completely ass-pull, with players logically outfoxing each other to win games lest a laser from the sky punch them through the top of their heads.

The show was so good I didn’t realize it was based on a manga by Haro Aso (Zom 100: Bucketlist of the Dead) that was also adapted into an anime—a fact that speaks to its overall quality in a sea of lackluster live-action Netflix projects. And for two seasons it came and went, adapting that story prior to Squid Game mania and, subsequently, in the throes of its pop culture takeover. That is, until a third season was released last year, ripping Arisu and his lover Usagi from their peaceful lives post-death games and throwing them back into the fray like a kid with a magnifying glass looming over an ant hill.

I was rocking with the series for a bit despite the show clearly making stuff up as it went along until it committed the tacky, cardinal sin of copying what Squid Game’s third season did in its final moments, desperately sequel-baiting itself by asking the question no one was curious about in a stinger: What if it took place in America? May that answer never come because of the road it took to tarnish the show’s reputation. As far as I’m concerned, there was no third season.

So imagine my surprise to find that Viz Media’s recently released localization of Aso’s 2020 epilogue manga to the series, set 10 years after its conclusion, would retroactively act as a remedy to the Netflix series’ final season I wish I could wipe from my mind palace. The manga starts out almost exactly the same as the third season of the Netflix series (duh, the manga came out first), with Arisu going from a NEET to a psychologist and Usagi expecting their first child. That’s the last thing similar between the two.

Unlike the Netflix series’ contrived reasoning to get everyone back into the games, Arisu winds up in the games for a pretty simple reason. He and five other participants get hit by a billboard and wind up in the Borderlands. If you’ve watched the show or read the manga, this inciting incident is far from the cataclysmic events that send Arisu to the Borderlands the first time around, but what it lacks in spectacle, it more than makes up for in the challenge that awaits them.

In contrast to the more-is-more inventiveness of the Netflix series’ games in its final season, Arisu and company only have to play one game, which is essentially musical chairs but for keeps. Despite the simplicity of the game, the stakes of the 300+ page epilogue far exceed those of the Netflix series, where its collective of players, composed of an insurance employee, a nursery school teacher, an emergency room nurse, a doctor, and an unemployed man, have to debate whose life matters more.

It’s rare that manga get a chance to reach a conclusion without getting the axe, and just as rare for series on an indefinite hiatus to start back up regardless of whether a creator is healthy, willing, and able to spin more narrative yarn years after the fact. Which begs the question whether the juice is worth the squeeze to loop back to a series that’s already over. Evidently, I wasn’t the only one in doubt of what, if anything, could be gained from revisiting a series whose manga concluded pretty succinctly. Aso had his doubts too, which he lays bare near the midpoint of the manga, writing the following:

It’s been ten years since I started working on Alice in Borderland. Like Arisu, I didn’t want to ever revisit a horrifying world like Borderland, but I was given the opportunity to write a sequel and I just couldn’t pass it up. What does it mean to live? What do our lives mean? Now, at 40 years old, I want to retry answering these questions.

While its game is a deceptively simple one, a fatal road of agony, betrayal, and second-guessing the inherent good in the human spirit left me in awe as I flipped through its pages and found that Aso still had it in him to concoct an intense, not-so-unwinnable death game, and that what he had to say serves as a footnote to a series that’s more than earned its place in the pantheon of death game narratives.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

#Alice #Borderland #Retry #Netflix #Series #Reheating #Squid #Game #NachosAlice in Borderland,Manga,Netflix,Viz Media">‘Alice in Borderland: Retry’ Makes Up For the Netflix Series Reheating ‘Squid Game’ Nachos
                Not to pick at an irritated scab, but when the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones… happened… I, a fan of the series via the show, naively assumed all author George R.R. Martin had to do was pen a different bookend to the series to recover all the lost goodwill of the series. Little did I know that was a touchy subject among book-readers who’ve been tortured by the author’s perpetual procrastination for years. Condolences. While the same scenario isn’t fully analogous with what’s happened with Netflix’s live-action Alice in Borderland TV show and VIZ Media’s English manga release of the series’ extended epilogue, Alice in Borderland: Retry, the manga more than retroactively makes up for the huge disappointment I felt witnessing the show I loved go full Squid Game in the worst way possible in its final season. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49_44FFKZ1M[/embed] Alice in Borderland is a cutting series in which a man named Arisu gets trapped in a sci-fi death game where a group of sequestered survivors must compete in a litany of challenges in an abandoned city. Think Gantz meets Kaiji. Its rules are cruel, but never completely ass-pull, with players logically outfoxing each other to win games lest a laser from the sky punch them through the top of their heads.

 The show was so good I didn’t realize it was based on a manga by Haro Aso (Zom 100: Bucketlist of the Dead) that was also adapted into an anime—a fact that speaks to its overall quality in a sea of lackluster live-action Netflix projects. And for two seasons it came and went, adapting that story prior to Squid Game mania and, subsequently, in the throes of its pop culture takeover. That is, until a third season was released last year, ripping Arisu and his lover Usagi from their peaceful lives post-death games and throwing them back into the fray like a kid with a magnifying glass looming over an ant hill.

 [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8p6YkEPVco[/embed] I was rocking with the series for a bit despite the show clearly making stuff up as it went along until it committed the tacky, cardinal sin of copying what Squid Game’s third season did in its final moments, desperately sequel-baiting itself by asking the question no one was curious about in a stinger: What if it took place in America? May that answer never come because of the road it took to tarnish the show’s reputation. As far as I’m concerned, there was no third season.  Alice in Borderland Retry is now available in print and digital!  Read a free preview: https://t.co/OJcjm9wliH pic.twitter.com/8iqGzwjTIV — VIZ Media (@VIZMedia) July 21, 2026  So imagine my surprise to find that Viz Media’s recently released localization of Aso’s 2020 epilogue manga to the series, set 10 years after its conclusion, would retroactively act as a remedy to the Netflix series’ final season I wish I could wipe from my mind palace. The manga starts out almost exactly the same as the third season of the Netflix series (duh, the manga came out first), with Arisu going from a NEET to a psychologist and Usagi expecting their first child. That’s the last thing similar between the two.

 Unlike the Netflix series’ contrived reasoning to get everyone back into the games, Arisu winds up in the games for a pretty simple reason. He and five other participants get hit by a billboard and wind up in the Borderlands. If you’ve watched the show or read the manga, this inciting incident is far from the cataclysmic events that send Arisu to the Borderlands the first time around, but what it lacks in spectacle, it more than makes up for in the challenge that awaits them. In contrast to the more-is-more inventiveness of the Netflix series’ games in its final season, Arisu and company only have to play one game, which is essentially musical chairs but for keeps. Despite the simplicity of the game, the stakes of the 300+ page epilogue far exceed those of the Netflix series, where its collective of players, composed of an insurance employee, a nursery school teacher, an emergency room nurse, a doctor, and an unemployed man, have to debate whose life matters more. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dq2p_B5MD0c[/embed] It’s rare that manga get a chance to reach a conclusion without getting the axe, and just as rare for series on an indefinite hiatus to start back up regardless of whether a creator is healthy, willing, and able to spin more narrative yarn years after the fact. Which begs the question whether the juice is worth the squeeze to loop back to a series that’s already over. Evidently, I wasn’t the only one in doubt of what, if anything, could be gained from revisiting a series whose manga concluded pretty succinctly. Aso had his doubts too, which he lays bare near the midpoint of the manga, writing the following:

 It’s been ten years since I started working on Alice in Borderland. Like Arisu, I didn’t want to ever revisit a horrifying world like Borderland, but I was given the opportunity to write a sequel and I just couldn’t pass it up. What does it mean to live? What do our lives mean? Now, at 40 years old, I want to retry answering these questions. While its game is a deceptively simple one, a fatal road of agony, betrayal, and second-guessing the inherent good in the human spirit left me in awe as I flipped through its pages and found that Aso still had it in him to concoct an intense, not-so-unwinnable death game, and that what he had to say serves as a footnote to a series that’s more than earned its place in the pantheon of death game narratives.  Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.      #Alice #Borderland #Retry #Netflix #Series #Reheating #Squid #Game #NachosAlice in Borderland,Manga,Netflix,Viz Media

happened… I, a fan of the series via the show, naively assumed all author George R.R. Martin had to do was pen a different bookend to the series to recover all the lost goodwill of the series. Little did I know that was a touchy subject among book-readers who’ve been tortured by the author’s perpetual procrastination for years. Condolences.

While the same scenario isn’t fully analogous with what’s happened with Netflix’s live-action Alice in Borderland TV show and VIZ Media’s English manga release of the series’ extended epilogue, Alice in Borderland: Retry, the manga more than retroactively makes up for the huge disappointment I felt witnessing the show I loved go full Squid Game in the worst way possible in its final season.

Alice in Borderland is a cutting series in which a man named Arisu gets trapped in a sci-fi death game where a group of sequestered survivors must compete in a litany of challenges in an abandoned city. Think Gantz meets Kaiji. Its rules are cruel, but never completely ass-pull, with players logically outfoxing each other to win games lest a laser from the sky punch them through the top of their heads.

The show was so good I didn’t realize it was based on a manga by Haro Aso (Zom 100: Bucketlist of the Dead) that was also adapted into an anime—a fact that speaks to its overall quality in a sea of lackluster live-action Netflix projects. And for two seasons it came and went, adapting that story prior to Squid Game mania and, subsequently, in the throes of its pop culture takeover. That is, until a third season was released last year, ripping Arisu and his lover Usagi from their peaceful lives post-death games and throwing them back into the fray like a kid with a magnifying glass looming over an ant hill.

I was rocking with the series for a bit despite the show clearly making stuff up as it went along until it committed the tacky, cardinal sin of copying what Squid Game’s third season did in its final moments, desperately sequel-baiting itself by asking the question no one was curious about in a stinger: What if it took place in America? May that answer never come because of the road it took to tarnish the show’s reputation. As far as I’m concerned, there was no third season.

So imagine my surprise to find that Viz Media’s recently released localization of Aso’s 2020 epilogue manga to the series, set 10 years after its conclusion, would retroactively act as a remedy to the Netflix series’ final season I wish I could wipe from my mind palace. The manga starts out almost exactly the same as the third season of the Netflix series (duh, the manga came out first), with Arisu going from a NEET to a psychologist and Usagi expecting their first child. That’s the last thing similar between the two.

Unlike the Netflix series’ contrived reasoning to get everyone back into the games, Arisu winds up in the games for a pretty simple reason. He and five other participants get hit by a billboard and wind up in the Borderlands. If you’ve watched the show or read the manga, this inciting incident is far from the cataclysmic events that send Arisu to the Borderlands the first time around, but what it lacks in spectacle, it more than makes up for in the challenge that awaits them.

In contrast to the more-is-more inventiveness of the Netflix series’ games in its final season, Arisu and company only have to play one game, which is essentially musical chairs but for keeps. Despite the simplicity of the game, the stakes of the 300+ page epilogue far exceed those of the Netflix series, where its collective of players, composed of an insurance employee, a nursery school teacher, an emergency room nurse, a doctor, and an unemployed man, have to debate whose life matters more.

It’s rare that manga get a chance to reach a conclusion without getting the axe, and just as rare for series on an indefinite hiatus to start back up regardless of whether a creator is healthy, willing, and able to spin more narrative yarn years after the fact. Which begs the question whether the juice is worth the squeeze to loop back to a series that’s already over. Evidently, I wasn’t the only one in doubt of what, if anything, could be gained from revisiting a series whose manga concluded pretty succinctly. Aso had his doubts too, which he lays bare near the midpoint of the manga, writing the following:

It’s been ten years since I started working on Alice in Borderland. Like Arisu, I didn’t want to ever revisit a horrifying world like Borderland, but I was given the opportunity to write a sequel and I just couldn’t pass it up. What does it mean to live? What do our lives mean? Now, at 40 years old, I want to retry answering these questions.

While its game is a deceptively simple one, a fatal road of agony, betrayal, and second-guessing the inherent good in the human spirit left me in awe as I flipped through its pages and found that Aso still had it in him to concoct an intense, not-so-unwinnable death game, and that what he had to say serves as a footnote to a series that’s more than earned its place in the pantheon of death game narratives.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

#Alice #Borderland #Retry #Netflix #Series #Reheating #Squid #Game #NachosAlice in Borderland,Manga,Netflix,Viz Media">‘Alice in Borderland: Retry’ Makes Up For the Netflix Series Reheating ‘Squid Game’ Nachos‘Alice in Borderland: Retry’ Makes Up For the Netflix Series Reheating ‘Squid Game’ Nachos
                Not to pick at an irritated scab, but when the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones… happened… I, a fan of the series via the show, naively assumed all author George R.R. Martin had to do was pen a different bookend to the series to recover all the lost goodwill of the series. Little did I know that was a touchy subject among book-readers who’ve been tortured by the author’s perpetual procrastination for years. Condolences. While the same scenario isn’t fully analogous with what’s happened with Netflix’s live-action Alice in Borderland TV show and VIZ Media’s English manga release of the series’ extended epilogue, Alice in Borderland: Retry, the manga more than retroactively makes up for the huge disappointment I felt witnessing the show I loved go full Squid Game in the worst way possible in its final season. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49_44FFKZ1M[/embed] Alice in Borderland is a cutting series in which a man named Arisu gets trapped in a sci-fi death game where a group of sequestered survivors must compete in a litany of challenges in an abandoned city. Think Gantz meets Kaiji. Its rules are cruel, but never completely ass-pull, with players logically outfoxing each other to win games lest a laser from the sky punch them through the top of their heads.

 The show was so good I didn’t realize it was based on a manga by Haro Aso (Zom 100: Bucketlist of the Dead) that was also adapted into an anime—a fact that speaks to its overall quality in a sea of lackluster live-action Netflix projects. And for two seasons it came and went, adapting that story prior to Squid Game mania and, subsequently, in the throes of its pop culture takeover. That is, until a third season was released last year, ripping Arisu and his lover Usagi from their peaceful lives post-death games and throwing them back into the fray like a kid with a magnifying glass looming over an ant hill.

 [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8p6YkEPVco[/embed] I was rocking with the series for a bit despite the show clearly making stuff up as it went along until it committed the tacky, cardinal sin of copying what Squid Game’s third season did in its final moments, desperately sequel-baiting itself by asking the question no one was curious about in a stinger: What if it took place in America? May that answer never come because of the road it took to tarnish the show’s reputation. As far as I’m concerned, there was no third season.  Alice in Borderland Retry is now available in print and digital!  Read a free preview: https://t.co/OJcjm9wliH pic.twitter.com/8iqGzwjTIV — VIZ Media (@VIZMedia) July 21, 2026  So imagine my surprise to find that Viz Media’s recently released localization of Aso’s 2020 epilogue manga to the series, set 10 years after its conclusion, would retroactively act as a remedy to the Netflix series’ final season I wish I could wipe from my mind palace. The manga starts out almost exactly the same as the third season of the Netflix series (duh, the manga came out first), with Arisu going from a NEET to a psychologist and Usagi expecting their first child. That’s the last thing similar between the two.

 Unlike the Netflix series’ contrived reasoning to get everyone back into the games, Arisu winds up in the games for a pretty simple reason. He and five other participants get hit by a billboard and wind up in the Borderlands. If you’ve watched the show or read the manga, this inciting incident is far from the cataclysmic events that send Arisu to the Borderlands the first time around, but what it lacks in spectacle, it more than makes up for in the challenge that awaits them. In contrast to the more-is-more inventiveness of the Netflix series’ games in its final season, Arisu and company only have to play one game, which is essentially musical chairs but for keeps. Despite the simplicity of the game, the stakes of the 300+ page epilogue far exceed those of the Netflix series, where its collective of players, composed of an insurance employee, a nursery school teacher, an emergency room nurse, a doctor, and an unemployed man, have to debate whose life matters more. [embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dq2p_B5MD0c[/embed] It’s rare that manga get a chance to reach a conclusion without getting the axe, and just as rare for series on an indefinite hiatus to start back up regardless of whether a creator is healthy, willing, and able to spin more narrative yarn years after the fact. Which begs the question whether the juice is worth the squeeze to loop back to a series that’s already over. Evidently, I wasn’t the only one in doubt of what, if anything, could be gained from revisiting a series whose manga concluded pretty succinctly. Aso had his doubts too, which he lays bare near the midpoint of the manga, writing the following:

 It’s been ten years since I started working on Alice in Borderland. Like Arisu, I didn’t want to ever revisit a horrifying world like Borderland, but I was given the opportunity to write a sequel and I just couldn’t pass it up. What does it mean to live? What do our lives mean? Now, at 40 years old, I want to retry answering these questions. While its game is a deceptively simple one, a fatal road of agony, betrayal, and second-guessing the inherent good in the human spirit left me in awe as I flipped through its pages and found that Aso still had it in him to concoct an intense, not-so-unwinnable death game, and that what he had to say serves as a footnote to a series that’s more than earned its place in the pantheon of death game narratives.  Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.      #Alice #Borderland #Retry #Netflix #Series #Reheating #Squid #Game #NachosAlice in Borderland,Manga,Netflix,Viz Media

Not to pick at an irritated scab, but when the eighth and final season of Game of Throneshappened… I, a fan of the series via the show, naively assumed all author George R.R. Martin had to do was pen a different bookend to the series to recover all the lost goodwill of the series. Little did I know that was a touchy subject among book-readers who’ve been tortured by the author’s perpetual procrastination for years. Condolences.

While the same scenario isn’t fully analogous with what’s happened with Netflix’s live-action Alice in Borderland TV show and VIZ Media’s English manga release of the series’ extended epilogue, Alice in Borderland: Retry, the manga more than retroactively makes up for the huge disappointment I felt witnessing the show I loved go full Squid Game in the worst way possible in its final season.

Alice in Borderland is a cutting series in which a man named Arisu gets trapped in a sci-fi death game where a group of sequestered survivors must compete in a litany of challenges in an abandoned city. Think Gantz meets Kaiji. Its rules are cruel, but never completely ass-pull, with players logically outfoxing each other to win games lest a laser from the sky punch them through the top of their heads.

The show was so good I didn’t realize it was based on a manga by Haro Aso (Zom 100: Bucketlist of the Dead) that was also adapted into an anime—a fact that speaks to its overall quality in a sea of lackluster live-action Netflix projects. And for two seasons it came and went, adapting that story prior to Squid Game mania and, subsequently, in the throes of its pop culture takeover. That is, until a third season was released last year, ripping Arisu and his lover Usagi from their peaceful lives post-death games and throwing them back into the fray like a kid with a magnifying glass looming over an ant hill.

I was rocking with the series for a bit despite the show clearly making stuff up as it went along until it committed the tacky, cardinal sin of copying what Squid Game’s third season did in its final moments, desperately sequel-baiting itself by asking the question no one was curious about in a stinger: What if it took place in America? May that answer never come because of the road it took to tarnish the show’s reputation. As far as I’m concerned, there was no third season.

So imagine my surprise to find that Viz Media’s recently released localization of Aso’s 2020 epilogue manga to the series, set 10 years after its conclusion, would retroactively act as a remedy to the Netflix series’ final season I wish I could wipe from my mind palace. The manga starts out almost exactly the same as the third season of the Netflix series (duh, the manga came out first), with Arisu going from a NEET to a psychologist and Usagi expecting their first child. That’s the last thing similar between the two.

Unlike the Netflix series’ contrived reasoning to get everyone back into the games, Arisu winds up in the games for a pretty simple reason. He and five other participants get hit by a billboard and wind up in the Borderlands. If you’ve watched the show or read the manga, this inciting incident is far from the cataclysmic events that send Arisu to the Borderlands the first time around, but what it lacks in spectacle, it more than makes up for in the challenge that awaits them.

In contrast to the more-is-more inventiveness of the Netflix series’ games in its final season, Arisu and company only have to play one game, which is essentially musical chairs but for keeps. Despite the simplicity of the game, the stakes of the 300+ page epilogue far exceed those of the Netflix series, where its collective of players, composed of an insurance employee, a nursery school teacher, an emergency room nurse, a doctor, and an unemployed man, have to debate whose life matters more.

It’s rare that manga get a chance to reach a conclusion without getting the axe, and just as rare for series on an indefinite hiatus to start back up regardless of whether a creator is healthy, willing, and able to spin more narrative yarn years after the fact. Which begs the question whether the juice is worth the squeeze to loop back to a series that’s already over. Evidently, I wasn’t the only one in doubt of what, if anything, could be gained from revisiting a series whose manga concluded pretty succinctly. Aso had his doubts too, which he lays bare near the midpoint of the manga, writing the following:

It’s been ten years since I started working on Alice in Borderland. Like Arisu, I didn’t want to ever revisit a horrifying world like Borderland, but I was given the opportunity to write a sequel and I just couldn’t pass it up. What does it mean to live? What do our lives mean? Now, at 40 years old, I want to retry answering these questions.

While its game is a deceptively simple one, a fatal road of agony, betrayal, and second-guessing the inherent good in the human spirit left me in awe as I flipped through its pages and found that Aso still had it in him to concoct an intense, not-so-unwinnable death game, and that what he had to say serves as a footnote to a series that’s more than earned its place in the pantheon of death game narratives.

Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.

#Alice #Borderland #Retry #Netflix #Series #Reheating #Squid #Game #NachosAlice in Borderland,Manga,Netflix,Viz Media

The AI industry is not quite experiencing a DeepSeek 2.0 moment, but it feels very close. The leading Chinese AI labs have been on a roll lately, releasing a series of almost cutting-edge open-source models. Z.ai released GLM 5.2 in June, Moonshot AI released Kimi K3 last week, and Alibaba released Qwen 3.8 this Monday.

Silicon Valley and Washington started talking about the models immediately, especially K3, which is widely seen as the best of the bunch. David Sacks, a venture capitalist and AI adviser to President Donald Trump, called the performance of Moonshot’s model “concerning.” Earlier this week, Commerce Secretary Scott Bessent suggested the US might impose sanctions on Chinese AI companies.

On Wednesday, Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, alleged that the Trump administration has “information that Moonshot AI distilled Anthropic’s Fable for the development of its K3 model,” which he said amounted to “stealing proprietary US technology and undermining American research” and was “unacceptable.” (Moonshot AI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

The new Chinese models have a few things in common: Third-party benchmarks show that they perform nearly as well as the best Western models; they are optimized for agentic coding tasks (the hottest thing in AI this year); and they are or will soon be released with open weights, making them accessible and transparent.

But perhaps the biggest parallel between the current moment and January 2025—when the world was shocked by DeepSeek’s R1 model—is that it reaffirms how American and Chinese AI labs are taking diverging paths when it comes to being open or closed.

When it first burst onto the scene, DeepSeek challenged the premise that only closed-source models built with billions of dollars of investment in compute infrastructure and training could achieve frontier performance. But since then, Western AI labs have continued developing AI the same way, and now American frontier models feel more roped-off than they were a year ago.

Anthropic said for months that its latest Mythos model was so dangerously good at hacking that only approved collaborators could use it. When it was finally released more widely, the White House responded by issuing broad export controls, which forced Anthropic to take Mythos and its less capable sister model, Fable 5, offline temporarily. OpenAI similarly delayed the release of GPT 5.6 after it received a request from the White House.

In China, meanwhile, the situation looks very different. Chinese startups and tech giants have doubled down on open source: Anyone with a good enough computer environment can now download an open-weight model, run it locally, add customizations, and overall enjoy a much greater degree of freedom than OpenAI and Anthropic would ever allow. In many ways, the open versus closed debate is more entangled with the US versus China debate than ever before.

There are a lot of reasons why Chinese labs have chosen a business strategy built atop open-source models. Being the newer, smaller fish in the AI field, making their models free and open can help Chinese firms attract more users, collaborators, and media spotlight. It also puts them in a separate lane of competition from the one that OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, SpaceX, and other deep-pocketed giants are in.

Earlier this year, rumors spread that Alibaba might be considering joining the closed-source race after it rearranged its corporate AI model development teams. But the tech giant announced on Monday that it would again release the latest version of Qwen—its line of open-source models beloved by the global tech community—with open weights, signaling to customers and the public it is not pivoting away yet.

#Chinas #Open #Models #Challenging #Silicon #Valleys #Playbookchina,open source,alibaba,generative ai,national security,artificial intelligence">China’s Open AI Models Are Challenging Silicon Valley’s PlaybookThe AI industry is not quite experiencing a DeepSeek 2.0 moment, but it feels very close. The leading Chinese AI labs have been on a roll lately, releasing a series of almost cutting-edge open-source models. Z.ai released GLM 5.2 in June, Moonshot AI released Kimi K3 last week, and Alibaba released Qwen 3.8 this Monday.Silicon Valley and Washington started talking about the models immediately, especially K3, which is widely seen as the best of the bunch. David Sacks, a venture capitalist and AI adviser to President Donald Trump, called the performance of Moonshot’s model “concerning.” Earlier this week, Commerce Secretary Scott Bessent suggested the US might impose sanctions on Chinese AI companies.On Wednesday, Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, alleged that the Trump administration has “information that Moonshot AI distilled Anthropic’s Fable for the development of its K3 model,” which he said amounted to “stealing proprietary US technology and undermining American research” and was “unacceptable.” (Moonshot AI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)The new Chinese models have a few things in common: Third-party benchmarks show that they perform nearly as well as the best Western models; they are optimized for agentic coding tasks (the hottest thing in AI this year); and they are or will soon be released with open weights, making them accessible and transparent.But perhaps the biggest parallel between the current moment and January 2025—when the world was shocked by DeepSeek’s R1 model—is that it reaffirms how American and Chinese AI labs are taking diverging paths when it comes to being open or closed.When it first burst onto the scene, DeepSeek challenged the premise that only closed-source models built with billions of dollars of investment in compute infrastructure and training could achieve frontier performance. But since then, Western AI labs have continued developing AI the same way, and now American frontier models feel more roped-off than they were a year ago.Anthropic said for months that its latest Mythos model was so dangerously good at hacking that only approved collaborators could use it. When it was finally released more widely, the White House responded by issuing broad export controls, which forced Anthropic to take Mythos and its less capable sister model, Fable 5, offline temporarily. OpenAI similarly delayed the release of GPT 5.6 after it received a request from the White House.In China, meanwhile, the situation looks very different. Chinese startups and tech giants have doubled down on open source: Anyone with a good enough computer environment can now download an open-weight model, run it locally, add customizations, and overall enjoy a much greater degree of freedom than OpenAI and Anthropic would ever allow. In many ways, the open versus closed debate is more entangled with the US versus China debate than ever before.There are a lot of reasons why Chinese labs have chosen a business strategy built atop open-source models. Being the newer, smaller fish in the AI field, making their models free and open can help Chinese firms attract more users, collaborators, and media spotlight. It also puts them in a separate lane of competition from the one that OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, SpaceX, and other deep-pocketed giants are in.Earlier this year, rumors spread that Alibaba might be considering joining the closed-source race after it rearranged its corporate AI model development teams. But the tech giant announced on Monday that it would again release the latest version of Qwen—its line of open-source models beloved by the global tech community—with open weights, signaling to customers and the public it is not pivoting away yet.#Chinas #Open #Models #Challenging #Silicon #Valleys #Playbookchina,open source,alibaba,generative ai,national security,artificial intelligence

DeepSeek 2.0 moment, but it feels very close. The leading Chinese AI labs have been on a roll lately, releasing a series of almost cutting-edge open-source models. Z.ai released GLM 5.2 in June, Moonshot AI released Kimi K3 last week, and Alibaba released Qwen 3.8 this Monday.

Silicon Valley and Washington started talking about the models immediately, especially K3, which is widely seen as the best of the bunch. David Sacks, a venture capitalist and AI adviser to President Donald Trump, called the performance of Moonshot’s model “concerning.” Earlier this week, Commerce Secretary Scott Bessent suggested the US might impose sanctions on Chinese AI companies.

On Wednesday, Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, alleged that the Trump administration has “information that Moonshot AI distilled Anthropic’s Fable for the development of its K3 model,” which he said amounted to “stealing proprietary US technology and undermining American research” and was “unacceptable.” (Moonshot AI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

The new Chinese models have a few things in common: Third-party benchmarks show that they perform nearly as well as the best Western models; they are optimized for agentic coding tasks (the hottest thing in AI this year); and they are or will soon be released with open weights, making them accessible and transparent.

But perhaps the biggest parallel between the current moment and January 2025—when the world was shocked by DeepSeek’s R1 model—is that it reaffirms how American and Chinese AI labs are taking diverging paths when it comes to being open or closed.

When it first burst onto the scene, DeepSeek challenged the premise that only closed-source models built with billions of dollars of investment in compute infrastructure and training could achieve frontier performance. But since then, Western AI labs have continued developing AI the same way, and now American frontier models feel more roped-off than they were a year ago.

Anthropic said for months that its latest Mythos model was so dangerously good at hacking that only approved collaborators could use it. When it was finally released more widely, the White House responded by issuing broad export controls, which forced Anthropic to take Mythos and its less capable sister model, Fable 5, offline temporarily. OpenAI similarly delayed the release of GPT 5.6 after it received a request from the White House.

In China, meanwhile, the situation looks very different. Chinese startups and tech giants have doubled down on open source: Anyone with a good enough computer environment can now download an open-weight model, run it locally, add customizations, and overall enjoy a much greater degree of freedom than OpenAI and Anthropic would ever allow. In many ways, the open versus closed debate is more entangled with the US versus China debate than ever before.

There are a lot of reasons why Chinese labs have chosen a business strategy built atop open-source models. Being the newer, smaller fish in the AI field, making their models free and open can help Chinese firms attract more users, collaborators, and media spotlight. It also puts them in a separate lane of competition from the one that OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, SpaceX, and other deep-pocketed giants are in.

Earlier this year, rumors spread that Alibaba might be considering joining the closed-source race after it rearranged its corporate AI model development teams. But the tech giant announced on Monday that it would again release the latest version of Qwen—its line of open-source models beloved by the global tech community—with open weights, signaling to customers and the public it is not pivoting away yet.

#Chinas #Open #Models #Challenging #Silicon #Valleys #Playbookchina,open source,alibaba,generative ai,national security,artificial intelligence">China’s Open AI Models Are Challenging Silicon Valley’s Playbook

The AI industry is not quite experiencing a DeepSeek 2.0 moment, but it feels very close. The leading Chinese AI labs have been on a roll lately, releasing a series of almost cutting-edge open-source models. Z.ai released GLM 5.2 in June, Moonshot AI released Kimi K3 last week, and Alibaba released Qwen 3.8 this Monday.

Silicon Valley and Washington started talking about the models immediately, especially K3, which is widely seen as the best of the bunch. David Sacks, a venture capitalist and AI adviser to President Donald Trump, called the performance of Moonshot’s model “concerning.” Earlier this week, Commerce Secretary Scott Bessent suggested the US might impose sanctions on Chinese AI companies.

On Wednesday, Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, alleged that the Trump administration has “information that Moonshot AI distilled Anthropic’s Fable for the development of its K3 model,” which he said amounted to “stealing proprietary US technology and undermining American research” and was “unacceptable.” (Moonshot AI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)

The new Chinese models have a few things in common: Third-party benchmarks show that they perform nearly as well as the best Western models; they are optimized for agentic coding tasks (the hottest thing in AI this year); and they are or will soon be released with open weights, making them accessible and transparent.

But perhaps the biggest parallel between the current moment and January 2025—when the world was shocked by DeepSeek’s R1 model—is that it reaffirms how American and Chinese AI labs are taking diverging paths when it comes to being open or closed.

When it first burst onto the scene, DeepSeek challenged the premise that only closed-source models built with billions of dollars of investment in compute infrastructure and training could achieve frontier performance. But since then, Western AI labs have continued developing AI the same way, and now American frontier models feel more roped-off than they were a year ago.

Anthropic said for months that its latest Mythos model was so dangerously good at hacking that only approved collaborators could use it. When it was finally released more widely, the White House responded by issuing broad export controls, which forced Anthropic to take Mythos and its less capable sister model, Fable 5, offline temporarily. OpenAI similarly delayed the release of GPT 5.6 after it received a request from the White House.

In China, meanwhile, the situation looks very different. Chinese startups and tech giants have doubled down on open source: Anyone with a good enough computer environment can now download an open-weight model, run it locally, add customizations, and overall enjoy a much greater degree of freedom than OpenAI and Anthropic would ever allow. In many ways, the open versus closed debate is more entangled with the US versus China debate than ever before.

There are a lot of reasons why Chinese labs have chosen a business strategy built atop open-source models. Being the newer, smaller fish in the AI field, making their models free and open can help Chinese firms attract more users, collaborators, and media spotlight. It also puts them in a separate lane of competition from the one that OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, SpaceX, and other deep-pocketed giants are in.

Earlier this year, rumors spread that Alibaba might be considering joining the closed-source race after it rearranged its corporate AI model development teams. But the tech giant announced on Monday that it would again release the latest version of Qwen—its line of open-source models beloved by the global tech community—with open weights, signaling to customers and the public it is not pivoting away yet.

#Chinas #Open #Models #Challenging #Silicon #Valleys #Playbookchina,open source,alibaba,generative ai,national security,artificial intelligence

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