Brands
Luma AI raises $900m as Saudi supercluster powers its world-model push
MUMBAI: If AI is the new space race, Luma AI just strapped itself to a rocket. The frontier multimodal intelligence company has announced a $900 million Series C, one of the largest AI raises of the year, led by HUMAIN, the PIF-backed full-stack AI powerhouse alongside AMD Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Amplify Partners, and Matrix Partners. The announcement, made in Washington, D.C. during the U.S.–Saudi Investment Forum, signals a dramatic leap forward in the race to build AI that doesn’t just reason or respond, but understands and operates within the physical world.
At the heart of this partnership lies Project Halo, HUMAIN’s upcoming 2-gigawatt AI supercluster in Saudi Arabia, one of the world’s most ambitious compute infrastructure buildouts. Luma AI will become a flagship customer, tapping into Halo’s colossal computational muscle to train its next-generation “world models”, capable of learning from video, image, audio, and language at unprecedented scale.
Luma AI CEO and co-founder Amit Jain framed the moment with characteristic audacity, “To create AI that can help humanity in the physical world… we need systems that can learn from a quadrillion tokens, the digital memory of humanity itself.”
Jain emphasised HUMAIN’s speed of deployment and end-to-end approach as key to achieving the company’s ambitious multimodal roadmap, with the partnership spanning custom models, go-to-market collaboration and frontier-grade deployment.
For HUMAIN, the partnership is as philosophical as it is infrastructural. “We’re not just funding the next wave of AI, we’re building the full value chain that makes it possible,” said CEO Tareq Amin, calling Luma “an exceptional frontier startup” whose research velocity and real-world product chops align with HUMAIN’s global ambitions.
The supercluster will enable training on peta-scale multimodal datasets 1,000 to 10,000 times larger than those used in today’s frontier LLMs. Alongside this, next-generation inference systems will deliver real-time global deployment, an ecosystem designed to simulate, understand, and eventually operate in the physical world.
Luma’s capabilities aren’t theoretical. Its flagship model, Ray3, has already become quietly ubiquitous used by studios, ad agencies, and integrated into Adobe’s global products. The new funding will accelerate Luma’s expansion from entertainment and advertising into high-impact domains such as simulation, robotics, design, and industrial automation.
Luma AI was also the first suite of models to launch under HUMAIN Create, a programme building sovereign AI models for the Arabic-speaking world systems attuned to cultural nuance, linguistic diversity, and regional identity. The new raise gives this initiative significant tailwind as sovereign AI becomes a strategic priority across the Middle East.
With $900 million in fresh fuel, a 2GW supercluster in sight, and a roadmap that aims to learn from humanity’s cumulative digital footprint, Luma AI is positioning itself squarely in the AGI vanguard. The company’s next chapter promises a shift from “generative AI” to reality-scale intelligence models that don’t just create images or text, but simulate the world itself.
In the race to build AI that sees, hears, moves, reasons and interacts like a human, Luma just hit fast-forward.
Brands
Delhivery chairman Deepak Kapoor, independent director Saugata Gupta quit board
Gurugram: Delhivery’s boardroom is being reset. Deepak Kapoor, chairman and independent director, has resigned with effect from April 1 as part of a planned board reconstitution, the logistics company said in an exchange filing. Saugata Gupta, managing director and chief executive of FMCG major Marico and an independent director on Delhivery’s board, has also stepped down.
Kapoor exits after an eight-year stint that included steering the company through its 2022 stock-market debut, a period that saw Delhivery transform from a venture-backed upstart into one of India’s most visible logistics platforms. Gupta, who joined the board in 2021, departs alongside him, marking a simultaneous clearing of two senior independent seats.
“Deepak and Saugata have been instrumental in our process of recognising the need for and enabling the reconstitution of the board of directors in line with our ambitious next phase of growth,” said Sahil Barua, managing director and chief executive, Delhivery. The statement frames the exits less as departures and more as deliberate succession, a boardroom shuffle timed to the company’s evolving scale and strategy.
The resignations arrive amid broader governance recalibration. In 2025, Delhivery appointed Emcure Pharmaceuticals whole-time director Namita Thapar, PB Fintech founder and chairman Yashish Dahiya, and IIM Bangalore faculty member Padmini Srinivasan as independent directors, signalling a tilt towards consumer, fintech and academic expertise at the board level.
Kapoor’s tenure spanned Delhivery’s most defining years, rapid network expansion, public listing and the push towards profitability in a bruising logistics market. Gupta’s presence brought FMCG and brand-scale perspective during a period when ecommerce volumes and last-mile delivery economics were being rewritten.
The twin exits, effective from the new financial year, underscore a familiar corporate rhythm: founders consolidate, veterans rotate out, and fresh voices are ushered in to script the next chapter. In India’s hyper-competitive logistics race, even the boardroom does not stand still.
Brands
Brnd.me enters Europe as haircare brands power global expansion
Bengaluru: Brnd.me, the global consumer brands company formerly known as Mensa Brands, has entered the European market following strong momentum across the Middle East, the United States and Canada.
The company has launched across the UK, Germany, France and Spain, with plans to expand into Italy, the Netherlands and Poland over the next year. The push is being led by its haircare and aromatherapy brands, Botanic Hearth and Majestic Pure, marking Brnd.me’s first structured expansion into Europe.
The European beauty market represents a total addressable opportunity of over $4 billion across haircare and aromatherapy, supported by high digital adoption and demand for accessible, performance-led products.
Brnd.me’s hair care and aromatherapy business currently operates at an annual run rate of around $6 million, with Botanic Hearth and Majestic Pure delivering roughly 10 per cent month-on-month growth, driven by expansion and rising repeat demand.
To support regional growth, the company has appointed a general manager based in Germany and is evaluating investments in warehousing and local team expansion.
Early traction has been strong. Within weeks of launch, Botanic Hearth’s rosemary hair oil ranked among the top five hair oils in Germany, signalling strong consumer pull in a competitive market.
Brnd.me founder and chief executive officer Ananth Narayanan, said Europe represents the next phase of the company’s international strategy. He added that the European business is expected to scale to a $10 million annual run rate by the end of 2026, with long-term ambitions to reach $60 million over the next six years.
The company’s Europe strategy centres on digital-first distribution, repeat demand and TikTok-led discovery, alongside direct-to-consumer expansion to strengthen brand equity and margins.
The move also aligns with growing EU–India trade engagement, supporting long-term sourcing and cross-border supply chains.
Brands
TechnoSport taps quick commerce with launch on Slikk’s 60-minute platform
NATIONAL: TechnoSport has launched on Slikk, the ultra-fast fashion app offering 60-minute delivery, as the activewear brand accelerates its push into quick commerce to capture Gen Z and young millennial shoppers.
The debut brings more than 150 high-performance styles to Slikk’s platform, with an average selling price of Rs 450, expanding TechnoSport’s reach across over 80 pin codes.
The partnership follows strong momentum for TechnoSport across Q-commerce channels, where the brand has recorded around 60 per cent volume growth over the past six months. The company expects quick commerce to contribute nearly 20 per cent of its revenue in the coming years as hyperlocal delivery gains scale.
Slikk, which recently raised $3.2 million in seed funding led by Lightspeed, has rapidly gained popularity among youth consumers seeking speed, trend relevance and impulse-led shopping experiences.
Activewear remains one of Slikk’s fastest-growing categories, driven by shoppers increasingly treating fitness-led fashion as an everyday essential. The platform has reported a 30-fold year-on-year increase in items sold, reflecting rising demand for performance wear that blends comfort with style.
TechnoSport chief executive officer Puspen Maity, said the collaboration would help the brand engage more closely with young consumers whose fashion choices are shaped by instant needs and lifestyle aspirations. He added that rapid delivery bridges the gap between intent and purchase, allowing shoppers to access activewear exactly when they want it.
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