Lenskart CEO Peyush Bansal responded to outrage after a Lenskart style guide showed the startup barring employees from wearing tilak and bindi at work while allowing hijab and turban. Calling the document "inaccurate", Bansal said, "Our grooming policy has evolved over the years." His X post soon got fact-checked, with a Community Note claiming no updated policy document was released.

Aliste Technologies has raised ₹30 crore in a pre-series A round led by Big Global JSC, with participation from Yournest Venture Capital and Hbeon Labs. Founded in 2021, the company develops IoT-based energy management systems for enterprises. The funds will support R&D expansion and scaling of its energy efficiency solutions across sectors.

Cohoma Coffee has raised ₹5 crore in a seed round led by Inflection Point Ventures and Swishin VC. The company, founded by Paritosh Birla and Kanika Birla, offers integrated coffee products and machines. The funding will support international expansion and manufacturing scale-up as demand for specialty coffee grows in India.

OpenAI has announced an update to its agents software development toolkit (SDK), with new features to help users build their own agents. The new features include sandboxing, which allows agents to work in controlled zones and not cause unwanted issues. The new version will also allow agents to work with approved files and tools within a workspace, OpenAI said.

Walmart-owned Flipkart has explored raising $2 billion (₹18,656 crore) from private markets in a pre-IPO round, Moneycontrol reported. Flipkart CEO Kalyan Krishnamurthy has personally met with investors in Singapore, US and UK to test appetite for a private fundraise over the past months. He has also engaged with Axis Bank, JM Financial and Kotak Mahindra Bank to gauge investors' interest.

Venture capitalist firm Accel has raised $5 billion (over ₹46,000 crore) in new funds to invest in AI startups. Accel will use $4 billion from the funding to invest about $200 million each in 20 to 25 companies building AI-powered technology, Accel partner Matt Weigand told Bloomberg. The firm has backed over 800 companies, including Anthropic, Perplexity and Lovable.

Google's parent Alphabet, an early investor in Elon Musk's SpaceX, owned a 5% stake in the space startup post the merger of SpaceX with xAI, Bloomberg reported, citing a filing. This bet could yield Alphabet $100 billion (₹9.3 lakh crore) at a $2 trillion IPO valuation. SpaceX, expected to raise $75 billion, is set to become the biggest-ever IPO.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has approached a US federal court seeking the dismissal of punitive damages in his sister's sexual abuse lawsuit. Altman said in the filing that Missouri's child sexual abuse law does not authorise such damage claims. Altman's sister has accused him of repeated sexual abuse between 1997 and 2006, starting when she was three.

Lenskart Academy's style guide for store employees sparked outrage for barring staff from wearing tilak and bindi while allowing them to wear hijab while working. The guide also placed restrictions on wearing sindoor (vermilion) and chura (bangles), with one X user saying, "Who decided this policy?" Lenskart CEO Peyush Bansal replied, saying the guide doesn't reflect Lenskart's present guidelines.

Sam Altman-backed autonomous vehicle startup Glydways seeks to raise $250 million to reach a valuation of over $1 billion. It plans to make podlike vehicles that provide on-demand rides, running on dedicated two-meter-wide expressways to offer taxi-like service, avoiding congestion. The firm recently closed a $170-million funding round from investors like Suzuki Motor Corp and Khosla Ventures.