Tech
India doubles down on state-backed venture capital, approving $1.1B fund
India has cleared a $1.1 billion state-backed venture capital program that will channel government money into startups through private investors, doubling down on its effort to finance high-risk areas such as artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing and other sectors broadly referred to by the industry as deep tech.
First outlined in the January 2025 budget speech by India’s finance minister, the ₹100 billion fund won cabinet approval this week (more than a year after the speech), allowing the government to move ahead with deployment. A previous iteration of the program, launched in 2016, committed ₹100 billion to 145 private funds that have invested more than ₹255 billion (about $2.8 billion) in over 1,370 startups, according to official data released on Saturday.
The program is structured as a fund of funds, a common venture capital model in which governments back startups indirectly by committing capital to private investment firms. It is designed to take a more targeted approach than its 2016 counterpart, focusing on deep-tech and manufacturing startups that typically require longer time horizons and larger amounts of capital, while also backing early-stage founders, expanding investment beyond major cities and strengthening India’s domestic venture capital industry, particularly smaller funds, per the Indian government.
At the announcement on Saturday, IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw highlighted the scale of India’s startup expansion, pointing to figures shown on a presentation slide indicating the number of startups has grown from fewer than 500 in 2016 to more than 200,000 today. The slide said more than 49,000 startups were registered in 2025 alone, the highest annual total on record.
The cabinet approval follows recent changes to India’s startup rules aimed at easing pressure on deep-tech companies. New Delhi doubled the period for which such firms are classified as startups to 20 years and raised the revenue threshold for startup-specific tax, grant and regulatory benefits to ₹3 billion, or about $33 million, up from ₹1 billion previously.
The approval comes just ahead of the government-backed India AI Impact Summit, where global AI companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Nvidia are set to participate alongside Indian corporates such as Reliance Industries and Tata Group. India, the world’s most populous country and one of its largest internet markets with more than a billion online users, has become an increasingly attractive arena for global tech companies looking to expand their user base.
At the same time, private capital has become harder to secure. India’s startup ecosystem raised $10.5 billion in 2025, down just over 17% from a year earlier, even as investors grew more selective and sharply reduced the number of deals. The number of funding rounds fell nearly 39% to 1,518 transactions, according to data from Tracxn.
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Vaishnaw said the new venture capital program would remain flexible, adding that “extensive consultations have taken place with all stakeholders.”
Tech
Nothing opens its first retail store in India
Nothing, the hardware company backed by Tiger Global, is opening its first retail store in India, its biggest market. The store is located in Bengaluru, where a large chunk of Nothing’s userbase in India is concentrated, the company said.
The new, two-storied location will show off Nothing’s products and other projects. Customers will also be able to buy hardware products and other merchandise from the store and have select items customized.
“We wanted to create a fun space. It is kind of inspired by all the parts that are related to the brand. For instance, the factory: if you buy a product, there’s like a production line where the product comes out. We also show machines where phones go through testing, like USB port testing or water resistance testing. So we just wanted to bring that world together,” the company’s co-founder and CEO Carl Pei said.
The store will feature products from both Nothing and CMF, its budget brand, which it spun off last year. Notably, CMF is headquartered in India and has a joint venture with local Indian ODM (original design manufacturer), Optiemus.
Pei mentioned that both brands are differentiated in terms of the products they offer, which fall in different price ranges, as well as the audience they target.
“Nothing is more niche with a higher price. CMF is more [targeted towards] mass. You know it’s mass, but it’s not like just off-the-shelf rebrand products that usually what occurs in this price point. They are also products that we put a lot of care into,” he said.
India has been Nothing’s strongest market, with over 2% market share in smartphones, analyst firm IDC told TechCrunch last year. It also noted that Nothing was the fastest-growing brand in the country in Q2 2025, with 85% growth in shipments year-over-year.
Other hardware makers are building aspirational retail stores in India, too. Apple is set to open its sixth store in the country this month, situated in Borivali, Mumbai, for instance.
This is the first Nothing store outside of London, where the company is headquartered. The startup said that it plans to open two more stores in Tokyo and New York, but didn’t provide timelines for openings.
The company raised $200 million in Series C funding at a $1.3 billion valuation last year, led by Tiger Global, along with investors like GV, Highland Europe, EQT, Latitude, I2BF, and Tapestry. Nothing has raised $450 millon to date.
Tech
Roku to launch streaming bundles as part of its efforts to continue growing its profitability
Roku shared its fourth-quarter earnings for 2025 this week, as well as some exciting plans in the pipeline. The company is rolling out new streaming bundles, expanding its $3 subscription service, Howdy, to more platforms, and partnering with more premium streaming services following the successful addition of HBO Max.
Launching bundles in 2026 is a smart move, as it could attract more viewers looking for enticing deals amid rising subscription prices. Many streaming platforms have been increasing their rates recently, and Roku aims to appeal to cost-conscious consumers. The positive impact of HBO Max on Roku’s premium subscriptions has encouraged the company to continue this strategy by adding more top-tier partners, which is likely to drive growth going forward.
Additionally, Roku launched its ad-free subscription streaming service, Howdy, last year and plans to expand its availability beyond the Roku platform. While specific details remain undisclosed, Roku CEO Anthony Wood stated at CES last month that the goal is to distribute Howdy widely, saying, “We want to distribute it everywhere.”
Other highlights include Roku users streaming 145.6 billion hours of video in 2025, marking a 15% increase from 2024. The company is also nearing the milestone of 100 million streaming households, though it has decided to report this figure less frequently.
Financially, Roku delivered an impressive quarter, posting net income of $80.5 million, a rebound from a $35.5 million loss in the same period last year. Total revenue for Q4 2025 reached $1.4 billion, representing a 16% year-over-year increase.
Looking ahead, Roku is optimistic, projecting total net revenue of $5.5 billion and gross profit of $2.4 billion.
“In 2023, our priority was to rightsize our cost structure and reach adjusted EBITDA breakeven in 2024, and we achieved that goal a full year ahead of schedule,” Wood told investors during the call yesterday afternoon. “Looking ahead to 2026 and beyond, we are confident in our ability to sustain double-digit platform revenue growth while continuing to grow profitability.”
Tech
Anthropic’s Super Bowl ads mocking AI with ads helped push Claude’s app into the top 10
Anthropic’s Super Bowl ads — which feature darkly comedic scenarios of people seeking advice from chatbots, only to be steered to “cougar” dating sites and height-boosting insoles — have been paying off. In the days since, Anthropic’s AI chatbot Claude has climbed from No. 41 on the U.S. App Store to become a top 10 app. As of Friday, Claude sits at No. 7 — its highest rank to date — suggesting its “no ads” pitch resonates strongly with users.
According to new data from market intelligence provider Appfigures, Claude’s U.S. downloads across both iOS and Android totaled an estimated 148,000 from Sunday through Tuesday — the most recent data available. That’s a 32% increase from the preceding three days, Thursday through Saturday, where downloads totaled approximately 112,000.
Claude’s daily average number of downloads from Sunday through Tuesday was 49,200, up 32% from the usual Sunday through Tuesday average of 37,400 per day.
The numbers suggest that Anthropic’s Super Bowl commercials, combined with Anthropic’s recent release of its new Opus 4.6 model, worked to drive attention to Claude’s app and its key differentiator from ChatGPT. The latter rolled out ads to free users this week, just as Anthropic’s ads had warned.
As a result, Claude’s app is gaining more attention than it did when it first debuted on mobile.
The consumer-focused AI app arrived on iOS in May 2024 to a fairly tepid reception. ChatGPT had beaten it to market on mobile devices and had grown to nearly half a million installs in its first five days. By comparison, Claude had only pulled in 157,000 total global downloads within its first week and didn’t reach a rank higher than No. 55 on the U.S. App Store.
Globally, Claude saw some gains this past week, too. Overall worldwide downloads of Claude across both the App Store and Google Play grew 15% from Sunday to Tuesday versus last Thursday to Saturday. However, this was less than half the gains seen in the U.S., Appfigures noted.
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