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Nvidia deepens early-stage push into India’s AI startup ecosystem

Nvidia is stepping up efforts to court India’s artificial intelligence startups earlier in their lifecycle, unveiling a string of partnerships this week aimed at reaching founders even before their companies are formally established. The push is intended to help the AI chipmaker cultivate relationships with future customers in one of the world’s fastest-growing developer markets.

The latest move comes through a partnership with early-stage venture firm Activate, which plans to back about 25 to 30 AI startups from its $75 million debut fund while giving portfolio companies preferential access to Nvidia’s technical expertise. The collaboration follows other India-focused efforts unveiled this week, including work with nonprofit AI Grants India to support early-stage founders and new ties with venture firms focused on the South Asian nation.

The flurry of activity comes as India hosts its AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, drawing top technology companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang was slated to attend but skipped the event due to what the company called unforeseen circumstances. A senior delegation led by executive vice president Jay Puri attended in his place, meeting AI researchers, startups, developers, and partners on the ground.

India has emerged as one of the fastest-growing pools of AI developers and startups, making it an increasingly important market for Nvidia as it looks to expand adoption of chips and computing software. By working more closely with founders at the earliest stages, the company is positioning itself to capture long-term demand as new AI-native companies scale.

Aakrit Vaish, founder of Activate, said Nvidia’s engagement with startups in India has historically been relatively light-touch compared with the U.S., but the chipmaker is now looking to work with founders much earlier in their journey. Activate aims to leverage that shift by connecting portfolio startups directly with Nvidia experts.

The VC firm, which Vaish describes as focused on “inception investing,” meets technical teams months before company formation and works closely with them as they grow. Its backers include venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, Perplexity co-founder Aravind Srinivas, Peak XV managing director Shailendra Singh, and Paytm CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma, underlining the prominent network Activate is assembling around its early-stage strategy.

For Nvidia, the logic behind partnering with an early-stage venture firm is straightforward: the earlier it builds relationships with promising AI startups, the more likely those companies are to rely on its computing infrastructure as they scale. Vaish told TechCrunch that growing startups typically consume increasing amounts of AI compute over time, making early technical engagement valuable for the chipmaker as a way of generating future business.

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Nvidia already has a sizable presence in the country through its Inception program, which supports more than 4,000 startups in India. This week, the chipmaker also expanded its local ecosystem ties, including partnerships with venture firms such as Accel, Peak XV, Z47, Elevation Capital, and Nexus Venture Partners to identify and fund AI startups. It separately teamed up with AI Grants India, co-founded by Vaibhav Domkundwar and Bhasker (Bosky) Kode, to support more than 10,000 early-stage founders over the next 12 months.

The company has also been broadening its startup outreach in India over time. In November 2025, Nvidia joined the India Deep Tech Alliance, a consortium of U.S. and Indian investors including Accel, Blume Ventures, Premji Invest, and Celesta Capital, to provide strategic and technical guidance to emerging startups in the country.

Vaish said Activate’s partnership with Nvidia is designed to provide a more curated layer on top of the company’s broad-based Inception program, which serves thousands of startups globally. By serving as an early filter for high-potential technical teams, Activate aims to give its portfolio companies more direct, timely access to Nvidia’s engineering expertise.

The stepped-up activity underscores intensifying competition among global technology firms to court AI developers and startups in India, which has become one of the fastest-growing pools of technical talent outside the U.S.

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SoftBank to spend an eye-popping $33B to build huge US gas power plant

SoftBank subsidiary SB Energy is expected to build a massive 9.2 gigawatt natural gas-fired power plant on the Ohio-Kentucky border, according to a report from Bloomberg. If completed, it would be the largest power plant in the U.S., capable of powering around 7.5 million homes.

With a price tag of $33 billion, the project would be more expensive than recent natural gas-fired power plants, which have skyrocketed in cost, Bloomberg notes. It’s unclear who will ultimately foot the bill, though traditionally rate-payers have shouldered the burden for new generating capacity.

The Japanese investor is a partner in the Stargate project with OpenAI. SB Energy did not say whether the new power plant would feed directly into the grid or if it would power data centers. OpenAI and SoftBank are in the process of building a “proof of concept” data center at GM’s former Lordstown automotive assembly plant.

A power plant of this size is likely to take years, perhaps a decade, to complete even before taking into account the shortage of natural gas turbines. If completed, the project could emit around 15 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, according to our calculations based on public, energy-use metrics. When including methane leaks from the natural gas supply chain, the climate impact could be even bigger. 

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Reddit is testing a new AI search feature for shopping

Reddit announced on Thursday that it’s testing a new AI search tool that takes community recommendations and matches them with products from some of the company’s shopping and advertising partners.

A small group of users in the U.S. will start to see search results that include interactive product carousels with pricing, images, and direct where-to-buy links.

The announcement reflects Reddit’s broader push to combine its community-driven platform with e-commerce capabilities. The move comes as Reddit launched its first shoppable ad product last year, called Dynamic Product Ads (DPA), which display personalized product recommendations to users based on their interests.

Now, when users who are part of the test search for something like “best noise-canceling headphones” or “electronic gift ideas for a college student,” they will see a carousel of related products at the bottom of the results.

This carousel will feature products directly mentioned by users from conversations on related posts and comments. If users tap on the product, they can view more details and then be directed to the retailer to purchase the item.

“This feature surfaces top-recommended products directly from discussions, giving redditors instant information about any product,” the company wrote in a blog post. “This test is designed to make Reddit easier to navigate while keeping community perspectives at the center of the experience. We’ll continue learning from how people use this new feature and refine the experience over time.”

While platforms like TikTok and Instagram have long integrated shopping features, Reddit is now looking to follow suit. Of course, Reddit isn’t the only tech platform that recently started exploring AI-driven shopping, as OpenAI’s ChatGPT rolled out an “Instant Checkout” feature last September that lets users make Etsy and Shopify purchases within conversations.

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Thursday’s announcement comes after Reddit CEO Steve Huffman said during the company’s earnings release last week that the platform’s AI search engine could be the next big opportunity for its business, not just in terms of product, but also as a revenue driver.

Huffman also noted that weekly active users for search grew 30% over the past year, increasing from 60 million to 80 million, while weekly active users for the AI-powered Reddit Answers feature rose from 1 million in the first quarter of 2025 to 15 million by the fourth quarter.

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As browser wars heat up, Chrome adds new productivity features

As AI companies and startups push their way into the web browser market, the world’s biggest browser, Google Chrome, is rolling out a handful of new features. The company on Thursday announced the official launch of a trio of options, including Split View, PDF annotations, and a Save to Google Drive feature, designed to more deeply integrate Chrome with one of Google’s other online services.

While these particular additions aren’t focused on AI, Google already integrated its Gemini AI assistant into Chrome. The move was made in response to the increased competition from AI providers like OpenAI and Perplexity, which are dabbling in agentic browsers. These so-called browser wars have pushed Google to be less stagnant in terms of developing and releasing more consumer-facing features.

With Split View, multitasking in Chrome has become easier as the feature puts two pages side-by-side in the same tab. This lets you work across two web pages or watch a video while taking notes, among other things. To use the feature, you’ll drag a tab to the left or right edge of the browser window or right-click a link and select “Open Link in Split View.” The tabs will automatically snap into place. When no longer needed, you can exit the Split View layout via an option found via a right-click.

Image Credits:Google

Another practical addition is the PDF annotations feature, which lets you add notes to a PDF or highlight its text from the browser. This means you don’t have to download the PDF and then open it in another application to work with its content. The option, a long time coming, could make it much simpler to do basic PDF tasks, like digitally signing a document, filling out a form, making notes within a file or personal document, and more.

Image Credits:Google

Finally, the new Save to Google Drive feature will allow you to save any PDF directly to your Google Drive account, instead of your computer, where it may get lost. When using this feature, the saved files will appear in a Saved from Chrome folder in your Drive, making them easy to find.

Image Credits:Google

Today’s update follows the expansion of Gemini and other agentic features to Chromebook users last month. And soon, Chrome is poised to adopt another change that was first spearheaded by its competitors: support for vertical tabs. (Tech-savvy users can even enable that option now, in an experimental phase, by changing a flag.)

This reimagined way to organize open tabs was one of the flagship features in The Browser Company’s first alternative browser, Arc, and is now found in its AI browser, Dia. By adding this feature and the others, Google hopes to give Chrome users fewer reasons to switch.

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