HCL Co-founder Ajai Chowdhry said that the company created its first PC at the same time Apple created its first. "I was passionate about creating an electronics industry in India and making the hardware sector flourish in India," he said. Chowdhry added that he is bringing together angel investors in his network to fund Indian hardware startups.

Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz has invested in AI chatbot startup Character.AI. The startup, which has no revenue, has raised $150 million in a new funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz that valued it at $1 billion. As per PitchBook, AI investment in 2023 to date has surpassed the full-year amount in 2020 of $1.5 billion.

Bengaluru-based space tech startup Pixxel has secured a five-year contract from the US National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) to provide hyperspectral imagery (HSI) for intelligence and surveillance activities. NRO works on space-based intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. Pixxel will provide technical HSI remote sensing capabilities via modeling and simulation and data evaluation.

National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) CEO Dilip Asbe said over the last few years Indian fintech space might've grown by about 50 times but there is potential for another 50X growth. "The way IndiaStack is going global, fintechs should aspire to go global too," Asbe said. We're 3.3 times away from 1 billion UPI transactions per day, he added.

Elon Musk-led SpaceX is planning to raise multi-billion dollar funding from a unit of Saudi Arabia's investment fund and an Abu Dhabi-based company, The Information reported. The round is expected to increase the space tech company's valuation to nearly $140 billion. As per the venture capital firm Space Capital, SpaceX raised $2 billion in 2022 and $2.6 billion in 2020.

HCL Co-founder Ajai Chowdhry said that Indian startups have the opportunity to make the nation a hardware powerhouse. India's capability in software, integrated with its hardware opportunity, makes the country uniquely placed in the world, he added. Chowdhry further said, "However, as hardware startups scale, they need to balance process with passion."

Firefox developer Mozilla has launched a new startup called 'Mozilla.ai' to develop tools "that make generative AI safer" and trustworthy. It's initially investing $30 million in the startup. The company said it's launching Mozilla.ai as other big tech companies with "the most power and influence" are still building AI "the same old way" that lacks transparency and accountability.

Ford Motor has said its electric vehicle business incurred a pretax loss of $3 billion in the last two years, and the same amount of loss is expected this year. The EV unit, named 'Model e', should be seen as a startup, CFO John Lawler said. EV startups lose money as they build knowledge and gain market share, he added.

The British parliament has blocked TikTok on all the devices on its network, following a similar ban on government devices in the UK. "The commissions of both the House of Commons and Lords have decided that TikTok will be blocked from all parliamentary devices and the wider parliamentary network," a parliament spokesperson said.

WeWork India CEO Karan Virwani told YourStory that the company was "never flush with money" and was lucky to get $100 million funding from its parent WeWork Global during the pandemic. The funding was first used to pay vendors, Virwani said. The co-working space startup last raised ₹550 crore from BPEA Credit in December.

IIT Madras Research Park President and Padma Shri awardee Ashok Jhunjhunwala has advised budding founders to not get into entrepreneurship if they need money immediately. "If you don't have any financial obligations, get into this area, fail, get up and start again," he stated. He called entrepreneurship a "multi-skill task" and said founders need to acquire several skills "to win".

Ahmedabad-based Yudiz Solutions, an AI, blockchain and game development company, has filed draft papers for an IPO with NSE Emerge. Yudiz will be the first company in the blockchain, artificial intelligence and game development space to be publicly enlisted in this market, the company said. The public issue consists of a fresh issue of 27,17,600 equity shares.

Hungama Digital Media Entertainment MD Neeraj Roy said the funding for Web3 startups is currently in the 'Ice Age' zone, and founders should remain prepared for it. However, he added, "If you are building the blocks right...capital will always be available to you." Roy further warned startups to keep adapting to the latest trends or risk being redundant.

IndusGo, a self-drive car rental platform, has raised ₹100 crore from its parent company Indus Motors. With this second round of funding, IndusGo has raised ₹120 crore since its inception in 2018. The funds will be utilised to add 1,000 cars to the existing fleet of 480 cars, the startup said.

Milkbasket Co-founder and former CEO Anant Goel's newly launched agritech startup Sorted has raised $5 million in an ongoing seed funding. Sorted is co-founded by former Ola and OYO executives Nitin Gupta and Sahil Madan, respectively. Sorted will enable access to fresh fruits and vegetables straight from the farm at competitive prices, the startup said.

Dream11 CEO Harsh Jain said everyone praises the founder when a startup becomes a unicorn or a decacorn but fails to credit the founder's family. A spouse goes through everything a founder undergoes, and yet their support goes unnoticed, he added. Earlier on Women's Day, Jain thanked his wife Rachana for being the "invisible force" behind his success.

UK billionaire Richard Branson's Virgin Orbit has plans to recall a small group of employees from a near company-wide furlough to work on rocket upgrades, an email to staff said. The furlough began in March after the firm struggled to raise funds and suffered a rocket failure in January.

Dream11 CEO and Co-founder Harsh Jain said he had to go through about 150 rejections before the fantasy sports platform managed to raise its first round in 2014. Speaking about Dream11's initial years, Jain said, "We thought we'd take the world by storm but that didn't happen. We did some pivots before we achieved user traction."

Video streaming platform MX Player's Chief Operating Officer (COO) Nikhil Gandhi has resigned from his role. Gandhi, who had joined the company in August 2021, previously served at TikTok, The Walt Disney Company and UTV. He worked closely with CEO Karan Bedi and was responsible for taking the platforms to their next phase of growth, the company said.

UK billionaire Richard Branson's Virgin Orbit is nearing a deal to raise $200 million from investor Matthew Brown, Reuters reported citing term sheet. The market capitalisation of the firm dropped to $150 million on Tuesday from over $3 billion two years ago when it went public. The company saw a loss of nearly $44 million in the third quarter.

Edtech startup PhysicsWallah is in initial talks to raise $250 million for raising its valuation and for potential mergers and acquisitions, Moneycontrol reported. The unicorn reportedly plans to value its company at $3.3 billion, three times its existing valuation of $1.1 billion. GSV Ventures and WestBridge, existing investors of the company, plan to add to their investments, the report added.

Shark Tank India judge and boAt Co-founder Aman Gupta, during an event, said his "Hum bhi bana lenge (we too can create)" line on the show is not a mere statement. "When we entered the audio category, there were 200 brands," Gupta said. "If we can get into it and build, I don't think others can't do it," he added.

IIM Ahmedabad's incubation platform CIIE.CO on Wednesday announced that it will invest in 50 new startups over the next year. "Over the next 12 months, we are committed to investing up to $1,00,000 each in 50 early-stage startups," said Vipul Patel, Partner-Seed Investing at CIIE CO. Since its inception in 2007, the incubation platform has invested in 350 startups.

Amazon has hiked the minimum starting pay for its UK operations employees to between 11-12 pounds per hour. This comes after workers at an Amazon warehouse went on a strike over pay earlier this year. "We're listening to Amazon workers and the message is very clear: this new pay rate is an insult," GMB union's senior organiser Amanda Gearing said.

Mumbai-based AI chatbot startup Haptik's CEO Aakrit Vaish said that IIT-Bombay has the highest number of successful startup entrepreneurs emerging from the IITs. A number of founders of unicorn startups, including Ola CEO Bhavish Aggarwal are alumni of IIT-Bombay, Vaish said. "Everyone thinks Mumbai does not have great startups. [But] there are 23 unicorns headquartered in Mumbai," he added.