Paradigm’s $2.5 billion crypto fund; Microsoft’s Edge update for Windows 11 criticised; and a chat with Sanjay Nekkanti of Dhruva Space

Paradigm, a crypto-focused VC firm, has raised a $2.5 billion fund, the industry’s largest to date. It is bigger than the $2.2 billion crypto fund Andreessen Horowitz announced in June. It cements Paradigm’s position as a leading crypto investor, The Information points out. “We’ve immersed ourselves in the frontier of protocol research and the culture of Web3,” Paradigm’s partners Fred Ehrsam and Matt Huang said in a blog post. Ehrsam previously co-founded America’s biggest crypto company Coinbase and Huang is a former Sequoia Capital partner. Meanwhile, in India, a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the weekend, showed that government departments differed from the Reserve Bank of India in their respective positions on cryptocurrency, Economic Times reported. Most government departments were in favour of regulating cryptocurrencies whereas the RBI is said to have reiterated its preference for a crypto ban, citing concerns over financial stability. Microsoft will soon update Windows 11 to block redirection of taskbar search results to browsers other than its Edge browser, Engadget reports. The workaround was popularised by EdgeDeflector—an app that allows Windows users to bypass some of the built-in browser restrictions found in Windows 10 and 11. Companies such as Mozilla and Brave had planned to implement similar workarounds to allow users to open Start menu results in their respective browsers, according to Engadget. Now they may not be able to do so. This move “places Microsoft in the same user-hostile and anticompetitive category as Big Tech competitors like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google,” said Paul Thurrot, who runs the technology news and analysis site Thurrot. “This behaviour needs to be examined by antitrust regulators in the United States, EU, and elsewhere,” he wrote. Roblox will invest $10 million to support the development of educational video games using its platform, David Baszucki, the video gaming platform maker’s founder and CEO, said in a blog post on Monday. According to The Wall Street Journal, the move is a way for Roblox to expand its reach beyond its pre-teens and teens userbase. The company had about 47 million users in the third quarter this year—about half are less than 13 years of age. (3:24) Interview: Sanjay Nekkanti, founder and CEO, Dhruva Space on making space-grade solar panels in India for the global market India isn’t known for hi-tech hardware, but a small number of startups are trying to change that by making varied products from computer vision modules to wireless equipment. In today’s interview, Sanjay Nekkanti, founder and CEO of Dhruva Space, talks about manufacturing space-grade solar panels in India for the global market.