QNu Labs raises 200 crore rupees to develop quantum-resistant cybersecurity

The women's wellness brand Nua has successfully closed a $50 million funding round in Series C. The round was led by Peak XV and Filter Capital, with participation from existing investors Mirabilis Investment Trust and Footpath Ventures.

It is reported that this financing includes both primary fundraising and secondary offerings, allowing Kae Capital, Lightbox VC, and private angel investors to partially exit their investments.

Nua plans to use the raised capital to move to the next stage of company development. Key areas of focus include strengthening the brand, expanding distribution and market reach, and enhancing research and development activities.

Nua, based in Mumbai, was founded in 2017. It serves over three million women and girls monthly, offering products in categories such as irritation-free period care, maternal care, and daily intimate care.

Founder and CEO of Nua, Ravi Ramachandran, noted that since its inception, the company has aimed to meet unmet needs in women's health by creating woman-centric products and a brand that genuinely resonates with modern youth.

He added that the raised funds will help increase Nua's annual revenue growth from 100 crore rupees to 500 crore rupees within two years while maintaining profitability. Ramachandran emphasized that the company will continue to consider changing women's needs and develop products that bring significant benefit to their daily lives.

Nua recently launched digital services, including the Nua Period Tracker app and the SecretKeeper chat, to engage with consumers beyond its core product range.

Saksi Chopra, Managing Director of Peak XV, stated that the women's health market in India represents a large and growing opportunity, and Nua has demonstrated a strong ability to build a brand that deeply resonates with consumers. She also noted that the company has become the fastest-growing brand in this category and ranks second among online players, showing its competitiveness alongside much larger players.

Sumit Sinha, Co-founder and Managing Partner of Filter Capital, opined that Nua is transforming the concepts of feminine hygiene and wellness through its superior product offering and a brand that has established a remarkable connection with consumers.

HiddenLayer, a company specializing in artificial intelligence security, has successfully closed a Series B funding round, raising $100 million. The leadership of this round included Delta-v Capital, with participation from Ten Eleven Ventures, Morgan Stanley, M12, and Booz Allen Ventures. The fundraising occurred amid a significant surge in demand for AI security solutions.

Over the past year, HiddenLayer's annual recurring revenue has increased more than tenfold, and the company has also acquired over 50 new clients. These clients operate in sectors such as financial services, healthcare, government, technology, and defense industry.

The HiddenLayer platform is designed to support organizations implementing generative, predictive, and agentic AI systems. The system provides protection for AI applications throughout their entire lifecycle. The capital raised will be used to expand the enterprise platform and strengthen sales and distribution channels.

HiddenLayer is scaling its platform as enterprises begin to utilize autonomous AI agents. These systems are capable of making decisions independently and interacting with external tools. The company's Agentic Runtime Security feature allows for monitoring AI behavior during operation, enabling the detection of unauthorized actions, tool misuse, and manipulation.

Furthermore, the Agent Harness Security feature was introduced, which extends runtime protection to autonomous coding agents. These agents can write, test, and release software with minimal human involvement, creating additional risks for development teams in the corporate sector.

HiddenLayer believes that traditional security tools cannot handle these risks alone. AI systems can be threatened through poisoned models, malicious inputs, and prompt injections. Therefore, the company has focused its efforts on creating security specifically designed for AI environments. The platform integrates threat detection, attack simulation, supply chain security, and runtime security.

HiddenLayer's security capabilities are backed by an extensive AI research program. The company's researchers hold 39 granted patents and 65 pending patents related to AI threat analysis, model protection, and adversarial attack detection. The team has also developed a comprehensive Adversarial Prompt Engineering Taxonomy, continuing to identify vulnerabilities in the AI ecosystem. Research covers foundational models, AI tools, and auxiliary infrastructure.

HiddenLayer is also involved in industry initiatives concerning AI governance and security. Its researchers collaborate with organizations such as CISA, MITRE, NIST, OWASP, and OpenSSF. These joint efforts contribute to improving red teaming practices and overall AI security.

The new funding will serve as a foundation for the company's next phase of commercial growth. HiddenLayer recently appointed Mike Gesnaldo as Chief Revenue Officer. The company also plans to strengthen partnerships with sales channels and expand its international operations. Key expansion targets are Europe and the broader EMEA region.

HiddenLayer anticipates continued growth in enterprise demand for AI security. The company already serves clients in several highly regulated industries, including banking, insurance, pharmaceuticals, and government. One leading provider of frontier models also uses HiddenLayer technology, reportedly serving over 700 million users weekly.

The growth in HiddenLayer's client base reflects growing enterprise concern over AI security issues. The company's platform aims to help organizations adopt AI with greater confidence. The company forecasts that autonomous systems will become increasingly significant in business processes, which in turn will create additional demand for specialized AI security tools. HiddenLayer will now focus on scaling its platform in parallel with the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence, asserting that its research helps enterprises respond to emerging threats, with a particular focus on protecting AI systems during real deployment.

Lin Junyang, the former technical lead of Qwen at Alibaba and one of the youngest P10 level engineers in the company, founded Pragmatik Labs in Shanghai. The company secured a two-billion-dollar valuation during its angel round. The round was led by Gaorong and HSG, who each contributed $100 million, with Tencent investing $20 million; the Shanghai Future Industry Fund also participated.

This valuation was achieved without any data on products, user base, or revenue, which is typical for the top tier of AI talent market, although notable in China. Pragmatik Labs, known by its Chinese name Yuyong Technology, positions itself as a next-generation company operating at the intersection of the digital and physical worlds.

The company's website describes work on aspects such as reasoning, tool use, environmental interaction, and long-horizon task execution. Pragmatik Labs' business areas include digital agents for knowledge work and physical agents for real-world environments. No product has been announced yet. Lin personally controls the majority of the equity through related structures, while external investors hold 12 percent in the local operating company.

The career path leading to this valuation has unusual characteristics. Lin joined Alibaba's DAMO Academy in 2019 after obtaining his master's degree, worked on pre-training models M6 and OFA, and later became the technical lead of Qwen at the end of 2022. Qwen released its first open-source model in August 2023 and evolved into a family covering language, code, vision, and multimodal capabilities. By January 2026, there were over 200,000 Qwen-derived models globally, with cumulative downloads exceeding a billion.

Lin resigned on March 4th and published a long-form essay on March 26th titled 'From Reasoning Thinking to Agentic Thinking,' which defined the conceptual direction for Pragmatik Labs. The shift in focus from foundation models to agents is not just a rebranding. Lin argues that the next breakthrough in AI capabilities will come from systems that interact with the environment over extended periods, use tools, take actions, and correct them based on feedback, rather than from larger static language models.

While working at Qwen, he already established a robotics and embodied intelligence team in October 2025. Both these areas are now integrated into Pragmatik Labs. The company's valuation reflects a broader investment model where leading AI founders can achieve high valuations before product launch. Investors cite Thinking Machines Lab, founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati, which raised $2 billion at a $12 billion early-stage valuation. Pragmatik Labs will require a product to justify its current valuation. For Lin, the challenge was not whether a Qwen-level model could be created at all, but whether a single architectural unit could build an agent company from scratch.