Arun Inam

We are pleased to announce that Six Stone Capital has successfully closed a ₹101 crore fundraise for Vervesemi, a fast-growing semiconductor design company. The round was led by Ashish Kacholia , MAIQ Capital , Caprize, and Unicorn Ventures — a strong vote of confidence in India’s deep-tech and semiconductor ecosystem. Pratap Narayan and Rakesh Malik are among the most capable and forward-looking founders I’ve had the privilege to work with. Their technical depth, execution capability, and long-term vision position Vervesemi to contribute meaningfully to India’s semiconductor ambitions. We also acknowledge the efforts of Ashwini Vaishnaw and the Government of India for their decisive push toward semiconductor self-reliance through the DLI Scheme. Policy support combined with private capital is creating real momentum in this sector. Proud of the Six Stone Capital team for executing this mandate. #Semiconductors #Fundraising #InvestmentBanking #DeepTech #IndiaGrowth #DLI #StartupEcosystem

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Excited to finally share what we’ve been building over the past year. Today we’re announcing the first investment from ARKITEKT EQUITY. Over the past year, we have been closely observing the structural shifts occurring within semiconductor ecosystems. As manufacturing systems become more complex, the infrastructure enabling those systems becomes increasingly strategic. These environments demand operational clarity, coordination, and long-term alignment. ARKITEKT was built around a simple idea: durable value is created where frontier technology meets pragmatic execution. Our investment in BBTech reflects this conviction. This is just the beginning of what we aim to build at ARKITEKT EQUITY. Stay tuned! https://lnkd.in/g_pQiBZY

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🚨 It is Journal official 👌 🤝 Nscale acquires American Intelligence & Power Corporation. Nscale - Josh Payne Alice Takhtajan Stuart Pann Tom Burke American Intelligence & Power Corporation - Daniel Shapiro Bengt Jarlsjo Gardner Boulmay Byron Best Pete Hollis Sanjeev Menon Parvez Ahmed Garcia, CFA Kyle Derham Sanjeev Mordani 8090 Industries Kerem Ozmen Wes Mendenhall Christie Allardyce Shilpa Patel Hamid Poorsafar

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Something remarkable is happening at the world’s oldest — and greatest — magazine. While many publications are struggling, The Spectator now has more subscribers than at any point in its nearly 200-year history. That starts, of course, with journalism. Under Michael Gove, the magazine has rediscovered a sense of surprise, intellectual confidence and mischief — reminding everyone that he was a journalist before he was a politician. Alongside a formidable existing bench of writers, new voices, expanding US coverage, a rapidly growing daily briefing, award-winning podcasts, live events, and the Spectator Club, the brand feels culturally alive in a way few legacy publications do. But there’s another, less visible reason for this growth: technology. When OQS acquired the magazine, it was clear that the biggest structural problem wasn’t demand for quality journalism — it was the plumbing underneath it. Like many publishers, The Spectator was stuck on ageing, expensive subscription “bureau” systems and a plethora of disconnected tech packages that frustrate readers, create friction at sign-up, and quietly drive churn. So we built our own. From scratch. Single-click checkout. Seamless billing. First-party data. Integrated marketing. In-house customer service. Retention tools designed around how real publishers operate. We call the platform CoEditor. From the moment it went live, subscriber trajectories across our titles turned upward. Not marginally — materially. It has been genuinely transformative. We’re now offering CoEditor to other subscription publishers who are serious about reducing churn, improving retention, and building sustainable reader revenue. But this isn’t just software. CoEditor was built inside a publishing group and is run by people who actively grow subscriptions every day. We bring the operators as well as the platform — marketing expertise, pricing strategy, retention playbooks, lifecycle campaigns, customer service frameworks and data analysis — all informed by what is actually working in-market right now. In other words, we don’t simply install technology and walk away. We partner. We execute. We help deliver measurable growth. If you’re a publisher looking not just for better tools, but for a team that knows how to use them to drive real results, Iet's talk! https://lnkd.in/eWaKFJ4v

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Some of the most enduring technology companies in the US were built on the back of deep academia-led innovation, paired with long-term private capital - especially in areas like semiconductors. That combination created not just companies, but entire industries. We’re beginning to see a similar model take shape in India, and AGNIT is a strong example of that in action. Built on 15+ years of research at IISc, the company brings together a world-class patent portfolio, deep process know-how, and an exceptional founding team that understands the full stack from materials to devices. It’s rare to see this combination of science, IP, and execution come together so tightly. Excited to be part of this journey alongside the team.

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Thrilled to share this landmark announcement from Global Interconnection Group (GIG). Our new joint venture with Scale-42 – GIGA-42 Ltd. – marks a huge step forward in building sustainable, AI-ready data centres across the Nordics. This is exactly the type of collaboration we envisioned when setting up GIG: bringing together visionary partners, renewable power, cutting-edge infrastructure, and long-term thinking to meet the world’s growing demand for secure, efficient digital capacity. A big thank you to our partners at Scale-42, and to the outstanding GIG team who are driving this mission forward. Exciting times ahead! #Sustainability #DigitalInfrastructure #DataCentres #AI #GIG #GIGA42

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Qualcomm agrees to buy Toronto-based/UK-listed Alphawave in $2.4bn deal. Alphawave designs and licenses high-speed connectivity technology that can be applied in datacentres and AI applications. https://lnkd.in/eKK8cb_b

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Every Sunday, I recap the biggest themes in AI, tech, and markets. This week, India's AI land grab intensified, regulators drew the line, attention wore a jersey, OpenAI joined the chip war. ▪️India is the world’s most strategic AI frontier - and the labs are bundling, billing, and localizing fast to become its default. ▪️The DOJ didn’t break up Google, but it broke its grip on defaults - a scalpel, not a sledgehammer, in the platform power playbook. ▪️Fantasy football is back - not just to crown champions, but to monetize ritual, identity, and belonging one Sunday at a time. ▪️OpenAI is building chips and Google is exporting TPUs. NVIDIA is still king, but surrounded by revolutionaries building guillotines in their garage. 📩 Full post here: https://lnkd.in/g7K6p4f7

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It was an honour to present at #FII9 in Riyadh last week. As AI models continue to scale and workload demands surge, datacenter networking must evolve. Optical technologies will play a defining role. At Salience Labs, we’re building on years of breakthrough research to develop advanced optical switching solutions that address this growing infrastructure bottleneck.

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Hexcel Adds Independent Director in Deal With Activist Investor "Hexcel added a new independent director to its board in a move that avoids a potential proxy fight for the aerospace materials company with activist investor Vision One Fund. "As part of an agreement between the two sides, Vision One will withdraw their nominees to the board that were to be voted on at the company's annual shareholder meeting. Vision One will also support Hexcel's board nominees, and agree to certain standstill restrictions and mutual non-disparagement provisions, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday. "The new director, former Kaman Chief Executive Officer Neal Keating, was appointed effective Tuesday." Keating's experience in aerospace may make him an ideal director choice. Yet from a bigger picture perspective, I wonder if this settlement is the right move for investors. More and more activist campaigns are settling rather than running the full process of a proxy fight with typically a greater number of directors nominated by the activist. Hopefully, activists are becoming like the public company boards they battle, i.e. more focused on reaching consensus than big results. #governancearbitrage #proxyfights #corporategovernance #activistinvesting #valuecreation https://lnkd.in/gazBUGFp

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Institutions don’t fail all at once. They fail when design can’t keep up with change. In Davos this week, I’ll be joining the inaugural gathering of the Institutional Research Network, a new initiative convened by The Digital Economist. The focus is not another set of conversations but the patient work of connecting research, markets, and governance so ideas can take institutional form and hold under real-world pressure. Some initiatives are about visibility. This one is about durability. #Davos2026 #InstitutionalDesign #IRN #TheDigitalEconomist

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One implication of NVIDIA’s AI demand outlook that may be underappreciated: The bottleneck is shifting. As AI clusters scale toward tens—or even hundreds—of thousands of accelerators, the constraint is no longer just compute. It’s data movement. That’s driving rapid investment in optical interconnects. But the key issue isn’t simply adding capacity. It’s coordination. Across the stack: materials → epitaxy → foundry → packaging → system integration From what I’m seeing, the real constraints are increasingly: • yield and uniformity at wafer scale • packaging and assembly scalability • process portability across fabs • system-level integration In other words: The problem isn’t building optical devices. It’s manufacturing millions of identical ones, reliably and cost-effectively. That distinction matters. Because it shifts the investment question from: “Who has capacity?” to: “Who can coordinate the stack?” I wrote a deeper piece on this dynamic and where it may impact AI infrastructure: https://lnkd.in/e6HDB9KX #AIInfrastructure #Semiconductors #Photonics #Datacenters #ArtificialIntelligence #TechInvesting #OpticalNetworking 

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Narrative versus nuance. Narratives can shape opinions and perspectives. Nuance matters too. Boston Consulting Group (BCG) published a report last week that noted an intriguing subtlety about the private equity industry. The title of BCG's report "Private Equity’s Advantage Is Shifting, Not Shrinking," highlighted an interesting nuance about the state of the industry. "Despite the skepticism," they wrote, "the case for private equity remains strong, and may even be getting stronger." BCG posited that "it’s actually getting easier to allocate to high-performing managers." But allocating to high-performing managers might be easier said than done. As many allocators know, manager selection matters. And that feature is true irrespective of vehicle (drawdown or evergreen), as Clearstead Chief Investment Officer Aneet Deshpande, CFA shared in recent LinkedIn post. Private markets is going through a period where more choice is coming to more investors in private markets. There are more funds, more products, and more structures. Asking the right questions about product structures will be critical for the wealth channel if they are to have success investing in private equity. KKR's Alisa Wood, Emily Pollock, and Bradlee Few recently published an instructional insights paper in January 2026 highlighting diligence questions that LPs should ask about evergreen funds. And there's another nuance as it relates to private equity funds. What exactly are allocators buying when they are investing in private equity funds? Permira’s Executive Chairman Kurt Björklund's definition of private equity that he shared on a recent podcast with Bloomberg's Merryn Somerset Webb can be useful for those looking to understand not just the “how” of private equity, but the “why” behind allocating to private equity. Understanding the nuances of private equity can help allocators know what they are buying and why they are buying it. And that’s why nuance matters more than ever when it comes to private markets. Read on for more👇 This week's Alt Goes Mainstream's AGM Alts Weekly, brought to you by DealsPlus, covers: 🗂️ AGM Index, an index that tracks the leading publicly traded alternative asset managers. 💻 Who is hiring: Senior-level positions from companies Blackstone, KKR, Apollo Global Management, Inc., Ares Management, EQT Group, Blue Owl Capital, Franklin Templeton, iCapital, Goldman Sachs, Partners Group, Ultimus Fund Solutions, Krilogy, Dynasty Financial Partners, MSCI Inc., Upper90. Subscribe👇 to see the latest trends & navigate this rapidly changing landscape as alts go mainstream. https://lnkd.in/e7wu97Db

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No better place to discuss the State of Quantum than at The Engine! MassVentures Massachusetts Executive Office of Economic Development (EOED)

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📊 Information Technology jumps to #1 sector ranking with a 59.59 composite score, driven by semiconductor & infrastructure leadership. 🔎 Strong institutional momentum highlights AI-driven chip demand & electronic component expansion as top opportunities. #InformationTechnology #Semiconductors #AI #DigitalInfrastructure #SectorSplice #Choosebetter

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Edge AI won’t be built by Telcos. (credit: Steven Yates) "Telcos are struggling now, and AI may accelerate its death", said Prof. Willie W. Lu. Telecom companies argue they’re the foundational infrastructure builders being unfairly left out of the edge AI wave, just like they were left out of 5G, MEC, CDN, IoT, and other previous “over-the-top” innovations. But their businesses and networks are strained by hard economic and technical realities that make climbing the edge AI value chain very difficult if not impossible: • Maintenance, upgrades, and backhaul are already costly in urban areas, but long unviable in rural regions. • Telcos use AI internally for predictive maintenance, network optimization, etc. But they don’t build or control the edge AI stack used by industrial or field-deployed customer systems. • Most industrial and OT devices lack 5G radios, making carriers irrelevant in many real-world edge AI and AIoT deployments. • Carrier buildouts necessarily target population centers. The result? Land-area coverage hovers around 50% in developed countries and far less elsewhere, which excludes many critical industries needing edge AI and AIoT. • Carrier networks are designed for downlink-heavy human consumption, not the uplink-heavy sensor data, image, and video streams central to AIoT. More telling: • Carriers are banking on AI-RAN (AI embedded in the radio layer) to regain strategic leverage, but deployments remain expensive, slow, and largely unproven — not to mention irrelevant where coverage is lacking. • Non-terrestrial networks like Starlink and Project Kuiper are delivering native IP connectivity to remote regions faster, with broader coverage and fewer constraints. • Telcos are boxed in by investor expectations for stable dividends over R&D and risk taking. Telcos are forced to operate much like public utilities, even as they aspire to become agile tech companies. ➡️ Bottom line: Telcos want the margins of hyperscalers with the protections of monopolies. This conflict stifles advancement. 📉 The result? They’re once again being relegated to a commodity data transport role. 🔌 A thinly differentiated pseudo-utility beneath the edge AI economy, much like electricity or water. 🚀 Meanwhile, edge AI is emerging in a completely different environment: • On autonomous field nodes running federated ML, locally and offline • Across hybrid local wireless networks (Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi HaLow, LoRaWAN, private 5G) with satellite backhaul and optional cellular fallback where available • In open, interoperable software frameworks and hardware platforms free from 3GPP technologies and carrier lock-in This isn’t theoretical. It’s happening now. Not in carrier labs, telco boardrooms, or 3GPP working groups, but in the field, built by those solving real operational challenges. Telcos aren’t “missing” the edge AI wave. They’re simply orthogonal to it.

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