Newsletter
AI goes deal-hunting, Hydrogen gets a boost, and The Kardashians land again.
🗓️ Morning, folks and Happy Fridayyyy! ☀️
Claude is making it harder to keep your AI use on the down low. Anthropic is adding invisible watermarks to text generated by Claude.
The watermark will stick around when text is copied and pasted, although heavy editing or changing a file’s format can remove it. The move is part of complying with new EU AI transparency rules and applies worldwide across Claude’s products.
Naturally, some users are not thrilled. Reddit and X lit up with complaints. Others, however, aren’t buying the outrage, arguing that if you’re worried about people finding out AI wrote your work, maybe that’s the point.
We also broke this down on video.
Now, let’s see what Dalal Street was up to. 👀
Sensex and Nifty ended near the flatline, with the Nifty failing to hold 24,400. Midcaps had a better day and outperformed the benchmarks after CAS adjustments.
Sector-wise, realty and consumer durables stayed in the green, while metals and private banks dragged.
Hindalco was the biggest Nifty loser, while Tata Consumer and Tata Motors PV helped Tata stocks bounce back
💡Spotlight: India Inc keeps the engine running 📈
India Inc. is starting FY27 with some serious momentum. Revenue across 838 listed companies tracked by ICRA jumped 22% YoY in Q1, up from 13% in the previous quarter.
Autos led the charge, while FMCG, consumer durables, retail, jewellery and quick-service restaurants also saw healthy demand.
Government spending added fuel, with capex rising 24% to ₹3.4 lakh crore.
But there was a catch: higher sales didn’t translate into higher profits everywhere. Margins fell and overall profits stayed flat, largely thanks to pressure on oil companies. Strip out oil & gas, though, and profits grew over 20%.
And if you want to see where that growth is showing up most clearly, look at autos. July was the industry’s strongest-ever month, with passenger vehicle sales soaring 34.3% to 4.58 lakh units.
Let’s hit it! 💪🏻
1 Big Thing: L&T is building India’s biggest AI factory 🤖
Larsen & Toubro bagged a ₹10,000-15,000 crore mega order from US-based Together AI to build what it calls India’s largest single-cluster AI infrastructure deployment.
What’s cookin’: L&T will install 10,000 NVIDIA B300 GPUs at its Vyoma.AI data centre campus in Chennai.
Think of it as building a gigantic digital factory where thousands of extremely powerful chips work together to train AI models, improve them and run them for users.
And these chips need a lot more than plug points. The facility will need high-speed networking, massive storage, cooling and enormous amounts of power so thousands of GPUs can operate together.
Why Together AI: the US company provides computing power to businesses building AI applications. Instead of those companies buying expensive GPUs themselves, they can rent the computing muscle from Together AI.
L&T will provide the infrastructure underneath it.
Zoom out: earlier this year, L&T partnered with NVIDIA to develop gigawatt-scale AI infrastructure in India. Vyoma has also launched a sovereign cloud platform and is building a 40 MW AI-ready data centre in Navi Mumbai, scalable to 100 MW.
The Chennai campus itself is being designed for gigawatt-scale infrastructure, giving the company plenty of room to add more computing capacity later.
L&T built its empire constructing India’s physical infrastructure. Now, it wants to build the infrastructure AI lives on.
While we are on AI 🦾,
Black Box jumped nearly 8% after the company secured a $131 million (around ₹1,240 crore) data centre order from a new US-based global hyperscaler.
What’s going on: Black Box will provide infrastructure services at a key US location over roughly three years, with the company expecting the engagement to expand further.
The deal brings the company into a new Tier-1 hyperscaler account which simply means a major global cloud company is now a new Black Box customer.
Keeping up with the AI updates,
Aurionpro Solutions bagged a nearly ₹100 crore order from a global hyperscale data centre operator for an upcoming AI-ready facility in Navi Mumbai. The stock gained more than 2% following the news update.
2. BHEL brings Norwegian Hydrogen tech to India 🇮🇳
BHEL partnered with Norway-based Hystar to manufacture equipment in India that helps produce green hydrogen.
What are they making: the partnership focuses on Proton Exchange Membrane (PEM) electrolysers.
Think of an electrolyser as a machine that uses electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. When that electricity comes from renewable sources such as solar or wind, the hydrogen produced is called green hydrogen. It can help replace fossil fuels in industries such as steel, fertilisers, oil refining, shipping and heavy transport.
PEM is simply one type of electrolyser technology.
What’s the deal: BHEL and Hystar will gradually bring more of the manufacturing of these systems to India instead of relying entirely on imported equipment.
Why it matters: earlier this year, BHEL partnered with thyssenkrupp nucera India for another type of technology called alkaline electrolysers.
With Hystar now covering PEM technology, BHEL says it is among the few Indian companies capable of offering both major types of electrolyser systems.
3. Blacksmith bags $45 million to fix AI’s messy code 🛠️
AI is helping developers write code faster. Now, someone needs to make sure all that code actually works.
AI code testing startup Blacksmith has raised $45 million in Series B funding at a $550 million valuation, in a round led by Peak XV Partners. Interestingly, the company’s valuation jumped almost 10x in less than a year.
Before new code gets added to an app or website, developers usually run automated checks to make sure it works and hasn’t broken anything else. Blacksmith provides the cloud infrastructure to run these checks faster and cheaper.
The company claims its platform can run these workflows up to 2x faster at half the cost.
And now comes AI: Blacksmith has expanded beyond simply running tests with Codesmith, its AI coding agent. When a code check fails, Codesmith can investigate the problem and automatically try to fix it.
The new money will help the startup expand into more coding tools that make it faster for developers to write, check and merge software.
4. Older than independent India 🇮🇳
Some Indian companies are older than your grandparents’ grandparents.
Balmer Lawrie started in 1867, GRSE traces its roots to 1884, and National Insurance was incorporated in 1906, all before India became independent. Today, they still operate across logistics, defence and insurance.
National Insurance began as part of the Swadeshi-era push for Indian-owned institutions, while GRSE went from a small workshop on the Hooghly to becoming a major defence shipbuilder.
Some businesses literally survive centuries.
5. Why is Tiger Global leaving TVF? 🤔
Tiger Global has fully exited TVF at a $22 million valuation, nearly 73% below its $82 million peak in 2019.
The markdown comes even as TVF’s revenue has grown sharply, showing how India’s OTT market has shifted from aggressive content spending to tighter budgets and a stronger focus on profitability.
6. Stocks that kept us interested 🚀
What went up ⬆️
✈️ Midhani jumped 9% as the company became the first Indian firm to get GE Aerospace S400 approval.
🔧 Astral rallied nearly 9% following Q1 results and positive comments from brokerages.
📈 Lenskart, TVS Srichakra & Tata Motors CV rose up to 4% on strong Q1.
❄️ KRN Heat Exchanger hit 5% upper circuit as Q1 net profit more than doubled
💥 Solar Industries soared 8% to fresh lifetime high after Q1 net profit soars 93% YoY.
What went down ⬇️
🧪 Thyrocare crashed up to 6% as promoter Docon Technologies sold a 10% stake.
📉 Page Industries slipped 5% after reporting Q1 earnings while Arvind declined by 2%.
What else are we snackin’ 🍿
👗 Kardashian drop: Reliance is bringing another Kardashian-linked fashion label to India, with Khloé-backed Fabletics.
🛡️ Border boost: NBCC bagged a ₹235 crore ITBP order to build infrastructure along India’s northern border in Ladakh.
✈️ Defence haul: India is eyeing a ₹1 lakh crore military transport aircraft deal to give its defence logistics a serious upgrade.
🤝 Tech team-up: TCS and Vodafone Business joined forces to help UK companies level up with AI, cloud, cybersecurity and smarter digital infrastructure.
And that’s a wrap. Pour yourself an extra one this weekend. 🍾
We’ll be back like clockwork on Monday!
Hit that 💚 if you liked this issue.
Disclaimer: This newsletter is for informational and research purposes only. Nothing here should be considered financial, investment, legal, or professional advice.
