Also in the letter:
■ ETtech Done Deals
■ Anthropic CEO flags AI danger
■ Microsoft challenges Nvidia
Eternal shares in stress on Q-comm cash burn quest
Deepinder Goyal, founder, Eternal
Shares of online delivery firm Eternal slid almost 9% over two sessions after the company posted its December-quarter results, as investors focutilized less on headline profitability and more on what lies ahead for quick commerce.
What’s happening? The concern is not about current performance, but sustainability. With competition intensifying across quick commerce, investors fear that Eternal may have to rely more heavily on discounts (and promotions), incentives, and quicker store expansion to defconclude Blinkit’s position, putting margins under additional strain.
There is also a view that the quarter appeared cleaner becautilize spconcludeing was temporarily limited.
Source: Google Finance
Tell me more:
- Blinkit added 211 stores in the quarter, taking its network to 2,027. This fell short of its internal tarreceive of 2,100 stores, partly due to the festive season and pollution-related limits in Delhi NCR. Slower expansion likely assisted limit cash burn during the period.
- That cushion may not last. Eternal still tarreceives 3,000 Blinkit stores by March 2027, a number that could rise to 3,500–4,000 due to competition.
- To sustain its stated goal of 100% year-on-year net order value growth, Eternal may required to open stores quicker, which could increase spconcludeing and weigh on March-quarter profits.
- Meanwhile, its Zomato food delivery business continued to improve, with adjusted Ebitda margin rising to 5.4%.
Also Read: The dark side of dark stores
Also Read: ETtech Explainer: Eternal’s older bets hover near breakeven as newer ventures burn cash
Eternal’s Q3:
- Net profit: Up 73% year-on-year (YoY) at Rs 102 crore.
- Revenue from operations: Rose a sharp 201% YoY to Rs 16,315 crore.
Also Read: Blinkit turns Ebitda positive in Q3FY26
Elon Musk declares WhatsApp is not secure; Meta executive hits back
Elon Musk, CEO, Tesla
Billionaire Elon Musk has reignited the privacy debate around WhatsApp, publicly urging utilizers to abandon Meta’s messaging app in favour of X Chat.
Driving the news: In a post on X, Musk wrote, “WhatsApp is not secure. Even Signal is questionable. Use X Chat,” while amplifying news of a fresh whistleblower-linked lawsuit against Meta.
- The lawsuit, filed in a San Francisco federal court by a group of international plaintiffs, alleges that Meta can access private WhatsApp chats despite claims of conclude-to-conclude encryption.
- Plaintiffs claim Meta stores, analyses, and retains access to utilizers’ “private” messages without clear time limits.
- The complaint has not yet cited specific technical evidence to substantiate these claims.
Meta responds: Meta rejected the allegations outright. WhatsApp head Will Cathcart responded directly to Musk, calling the claims “false and absurd.”
- “WhatsApp can’t read messages becautilize the encryption keys are stored on your phone and we don’t have access to them,” he stated.
- He added that the case was a “no-merit, headline-seeking lawsuit,” pointing out that the same legal firm has previously defconcludeed NSO Group, whose spyware tarreceiveed journalists and government officials.
Old concerns revived: WhatsApp has long faced scrutiny over privacy, particularly since Meta acquired it in 2014. Past flashpoints include data sharing with Facebook, policy alters around business messaging, and early issues such as address-book uploads.
SaaS startup SpotDraft raises $8 million from Qualcomm Ventures
(L-R) Shashank Bijapur and Madhav Bhagat, founders, SpotDraft
Contract management software firm SpotDraft has bagged $8 million in new funding from Qualcomm Ventures.
Round details: The funding is an extension of the $56 million round the company raised in February 2025, led by Vertex Growth and Trident Partners.
The company stated the money will be utilized to improve its products and AI capabilities, and to expand its customer base across the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and India.
About the company: Founded in 2017, SpotDraft offers an AI-powered platform that assists in-houtilize legal teams with contract management, including AI-assisted redlining and e-signatures, as well as third-party agreements.
Healthcare startup Nivaan Care raises $7 million in funding led by Sorin Investments
Nivesh Khandelwal (Left) and Vishwas Singh, founders, Nivaan Care
Pain management startup Nivaan Care has raised $7 million in funding, led by Sorin Investments, with participation from existing investors W Health Ventures, Endiya Partners, and Rebright Partners.
Fund usage: The company stated the money will be utilized to open more clinics in cities across India, improve its clinical and operating infrastructure, and develop its minimally invasive pain treatments.
Fintech Mysa raises $3.4 million from Blume Ventures, Piper Serica
Arpita Kapoor and Mohit Rangaraju, founders, Mysa
B2B fintech startup Mysa has secured $3.4 million in a funding round co-led by Blume Ventures and Piper Serica, with participation from Ikemori Ventures, Raise Financial Services, QED Innovation Labs and existing investors.
Fund utilize: The company stated it will utilize the funds to improve automation and introduce new banking products, including procurement tools, UPI-linked expense management, and a corporate credit card, while also examining embedded finance through its vconcludeor network.
In dystopian esdeclare, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warns of potential AI misutilize by rogue actors
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has issued one of the starkest warnings yet on artificial ininformigence, arguing that the arrival of extremely powerful AI systems could be just one or two years away, and far ahead of society’s ability to control them.
Are we ready? In a 19,000-word, 38-page esdeclare titled The Adolescence of Technology, Amodei extconcludes ideas from his previous piece, Machines of Loving Grace, but pushes the argument into darker territory. He describes advanced AI as akin to the sudden rise of a new global superpower, emerging quicker than laws, institutions or norms can adapt.
A chilling metaphor: Amodei envisions AI as a “countest of geniutilizes in a data centre,” consisting of approximately 50 million digital entities. Each, he asserts, could be more ininformigent than any Nobel laureate, technologist, or statesman, and operate at machine speed.
Quote, unquote: “Assume the new countest is malleable and ‘follows instructions’—and thus is essentially a countest of mercenaries. Could existing rogue actors who want to cautilize destruction (such as terrorists) utilize or manipulate some of the people in the new countest to build themselves much more effective, greatly amplifying the scale of destruction?” he wrote.
Microsoft rolls out next generation of its AI chips, takes aim at Nvidia’s software
Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft
Microsoft has launched Maia 200, the latest version of its in-houtilize AI inference accelerator, as part of a wider effort to lessen its depconcludeence on Nvidia for running large-scale artificial ininformigence workloads.
Key specifications: Microsoft’s Maia 200 is manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. applying 3-nanometer chipcreating technology. The chip is designed for inference rather than training and focutilizes on delivering higher performance per dollar inside Microsoft’s data centres.
While Maia 200 utilizes high-bandwidth memory, it relies on an older and slower generation than the memory expected on Nvidia’s upcoming chips. Microsoft has instead leaned on a large amount of on-chip SRAM, which can speed up responses for chatbots and other AI systems handling high volumes of utilizer queries.
Why this matters: The launch signifies a wider shift among cloud giants. Microsoft, Google, and Amazon Web Services, which toreceiveher constitute a significant portion of Nvidia’s demand, are progressively designing custom silicon to manage costs and adapt hardware to their own software stacks.
Also Read: Google touts its TPUs as alternative to Nvidia AI chips; Meta expresses interest
Leave a Reply