 Daily Top 5 |
DigiLocker seeks private partners, Slurrp Farm's fundraise plans
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DigiLocker is set to bring more institutions onto its platform with the help of private AI integrators. This and more in today’s ETtech Top 5.
Also in the letter:
■ Broadcom plans AI chip financing
■ OpenAI alerts groups over rogue AI
■ Trump used AI before Maduro capture
The central government is close to empanelling private agencies to widen the DigiLocker ecosystem, and bring in more institutions to use the cloud-based platform, officials said.
What they will do: The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology's (MeitY) ongoing empanelment process will bring in artificial intelligence (AI) integrators who will find, onboard, and integrate requesters, take the service live, and drive sustained transaction volumes afterwards, they added.
What is DigiLocker: It’s a digital repository where citizens can store documents issued by the government. The platform also provides a consent-based mechanism through which a requester can access these documents in order to validate and deliver a service.
Who are requesters: Besides government bodies, requesters include banks, financial institutions for loan processing, educational institutions for student admissions, as well as telecom service providers and corporates for customer/employee KYC (know your customer), etc.
Companies in the race: Indian generative AI platform provider CoRover and global IT infrastructure services company Kyndryl are among the companies who have cleared the initial rounds, and are now being technically evaluated.
Privacy: "Under the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) regime, agencies must legally ensure zero retention, storage, caching, profiling, or secondary analytics of any document data fetched through DigiLocker," an official said.
Bollywood actress Anushka Sharma-backed snacking and breakfast cereal maker Slurrp Farm is exploring a fresh fundraise, as some of its existing backers are looking to exit amid heightened investor interest and rapid growth in the healthy snacking category, people directly aware of the plans told us.
Fundraise plan: Talks with potential investors are at an early stage, and the size and structure of the proposed deal, including the quantum of stake sale, haven't yet been finalised, the sources said.
Valuation: Slurrp was valued at Rs 827 crore in a series C5 funding round this August, per Tracxn data.
Investor base: Angel investors such as Sharma, former IndiGo executive and Akasa Air cofounder Aditya Ghosh, and investor Ashish Dhawan collectively hold about 4.2% stake in Slurrp Farm.
Supergrains: Founded a decade ago by Meghana Narayan and Shauravi Malik, the brand positioned itself in the then-emerging niche of products that use supergrains such as finger millets, sorghum, and oats in everyday kitchen products such as cake mixes and breakfast batters.
Broadcom’s Wall Street syndicate is starting to gather $60 billion of fresh AI chip financing to benefit Anthropic and other companies, Bloomberg reported, citing people with knowledge of the matter.
Debt package: Banks involved in the massive debt package are poised to send out syndication letters for a $42 billion class A senior-secured tranche. Blackstone is leading an $18 billion tranche of class B junior debt, committing $9 billion from various funds with plans to syndicate the rest, the report said.
Why it matters: Broadcom is looking to sell more chips and other data-centre equipment as it competes with Nvidia, while AI companies like Anthropic need ever-more computing capacity.
Amazon is seeking to offload about $8 billion worth of advanced Nvidia chips to investors through a new special-purpose vehicle (SPV) to strengthen its balance sheet, the Financial Times reported on Friday citing people familiar with the matter.
How it works: Amazon would move thousands of Nvidia Grace Blackwell chips it is installing in US data centres into an SPV, which would raise money from investors and lease the chips back to the company. SPVs are separate, legally distinct companies created by a parent organisation to hold specific assets and liabilities.
Equity stake: Amazon plans to offer investors an equity stake of up to 10% in the vehicle, the report said.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman
OpenAI has informed more than 100 organisations about incidents involving unauthorised activity tied to its AI agents, according to a blog post by the ChatGPT maker, as AI labs face mounting scrutiny over rogue agent activity.
What happened: The company has been conducting review of the activities of its AI models after the accidental hacking of Hugging Face, which OpenAI described as the most severe rogue agent activity by its models so far.
50 petabyte under review: OpenAI is searching through roughly 50 petabytes (approximately 50 million GB) of data as it works to understand the full scope of its rogue agent activity.
OpenAI said that it has fired three researchers for allegedly mishandling "sensitive information" and violating company policies, including in connection with work that involved an external organisation that evaluates AI models, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.
Who was fired: The affected employees are Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak, and Mikita Balesni, people familiar with the matter told the news outlet.
Safety concerns: The firings come amid a tense debate about AI safety and whether the technology presents an existential risk to humanity.
US President Donald Trump with Elon Musk
US president Donald Trump reportedly used Elon Musk’s Grok AI chatbot for insight into how Venezuelans might react if the US captured Nicolás Maduro, weeks before the US forces launched a strike on Caracas to seize the then-president and his wife Cilia Flores.
What Grok told Trump: According to a report by TIME, Trump spent hours asking questions to Grok during a private meeting with Musk in December 2025. The chatbot reportedly described Maduro as "a repressive and deeply unpopular dictator" and said "many Venezuelans would likely celebrate his downfall."
After the capture: The report, citing officials, added that celebrations broke out in Venezuela after the raid on Maduro, and Trump was impressed by Grok's assessment.
Also in the letter:
■ Broadcom plans AI chip financing
■ OpenAI alerts groups over rogue AI
■ Trump used AI before Maduro capture
Govt close to picking private AI integrator for DigiLocker
The central government is close to empanelling private agencies to widen the DigiLocker ecosystem, and bring in more institutions to use the cloud-based platform, officials said.
What they will do: The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology's (MeitY) ongoing empanelment process will bring in artificial intelligence (AI) integrators who will find, onboard, and integrate requesters, take the service live, and drive sustained transaction volumes afterwards, they added.
What is DigiLocker: It’s a digital repository where citizens can store documents issued by the government. The platform also provides a consent-based mechanism through which a requester can access these documents in order to validate and deliver a service.
Who are requesters: Besides government bodies, requesters include banks, financial institutions for loan processing, educational institutions for student admissions, as well as telecom service providers and corporates for customer/employee KYC (know your customer), etc.
Companies in the race: Indian generative AI platform provider CoRover and global IT infrastructure services company Kyndryl are among the companies who have cleared the initial rounds, and are now being technically evaluated.
Privacy: "Under the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) regime, agencies must legally ensure zero retention, storage, caching, profiling, or secondary analytics of any document data fetched through DigiLocker," an official said.
Anushka Sharma-backed Slurrp Farm explores fresh fundraise as existing investors eye exit
Bollywood actress Anushka Sharma-backed snacking and breakfast cereal maker Slurrp Farm is exploring a fresh fundraise, as some of its existing backers are looking to exit amid heightened investor interest and rapid growth in the healthy snacking category, people directly aware of the plans told us.
Fundraise plan: Talks with potential investors are at an early stage, and the size and structure of the proposed deal, including the quantum of stake sale, haven't yet been finalised, the sources said.
Valuation: Slurrp was valued at Rs 827 crore in a series C5 funding round this August, per Tracxn data.
Investor base: Angel investors such as Sharma, former IndiGo executive and Akasa Air cofounder Aditya Ghosh, and investor Ashish Dhawan collectively hold about 4.2% stake in Slurrp Farm.
Supergrains: Founded a decade ago by Meghana Narayan and Shauravi Malik, the brand positioned itself in the then-emerging niche of products that use supergrains such as finger millets, sorghum, and oats in everyday kitchen products such as cake mixes and breakfast batters.
Broadcom amassing $60 billion to fund chips for Anthropic: Report
Broadcom’s Wall Street syndicate is starting to gather $60 billion of fresh AI chip financing to benefit Anthropic and other companies, Bloomberg reported, citing people with knowledge of the matter.
Debt package: Banks involved in the massive debt package are poised to send out syndication letters for a $42 billion class A senior-secured tranche. Blackstone is leading an $18 billion tranche of class B junior debt, committing $9 billion from various funds with plans to syndicate the rest, the report said.
Why it matters: Broadcom is looking to sell more chips and other data-centre equipment as it competes with Nvidia, while AI companies like Anthropic need ever-more computing capacity.
Amazon seeks to offload $8 billion worth of Nvidia chips to investors: Report
Amazon is seeking to offload about $8 billion worth of advanced Nvidia chips to investors through a new special-purpose vehicle (SPV) to strengthen its balance sheet, the Financial Times reported on Friday citing people familiar with the matter.
How it works: Amazon would move thousands of Nvidia Grace Blackwell chips it is installing in US data centres into an SPV, which would raise money from investors and lease the chips back to the company. SPVs are separate, legally distinct companies created by a parent organisation to hold specific assets and liabilities.
Equity stake: Amazon plans to offer investors an equity stake of up to 10% in the vehicle, the report said.
OpenAI alerts more than 100 groups about rogue AI agent activity
OpenAI has informed more than 100 organisations about incidents involving unauthorised activity tied to its AI agents, according to a blog post by the ChatGPT maker, as AI labs face mounting scrutiny over rogue agent activity.
What happened: The company has been conducting review of the activities of its AI models after the accidental hacking of Hugging Face, which OpenAI described as the most severe rogue agent activity by its models so far.
50 petabyte under review: OpenAI is searching through roughly 50 petabytes (approximately 50 million GB) of data as it works to understand the full scope of its rogue agent activity.
OpenAI fires three researchers over alleged mishandling of sensitive information
OpenAI said that it has fired three researchers for allegedly mishandling "sensitive information" and violating company policies, including in connection with work that involved an external organisation that evaluates AI models, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.
Who was fired: The affected employees are Jasmine Wang, Tomek Korbak, and Mikita Balesni, people familiar with the matter told the news outlet.
Safety concerns: The firings come amid a tense debate about AI safety and whether the technology presents an existential risk to humanity.
Donald Trump reportedly used Elon Musk’s Grok AI before Maduro capture
US president Donald Trump reportedly used Elon Musk’s Grok AI chatbot for insight into how Venezuelans might react if the US captured Nicolás Maduro, weeks before the US forces launched a strike on Caracas to seize the then-president and his wife Cilia Flores.
What Grok told Trump: According to a report by TIME, Trump spent hours asking questions to Grok during a private meeting with Musk in December 2025. The chatbot reportedly described Maduro as "a repressive and deeply unpopular dictator" and said "many Venezuelans would likely celebrate his downfall."
After the capture: The report, citing officials, added that celebrations broke out in Venezuela after the raid on Maduro, and Trump was impressed by Grok's assessment.
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