Mishik Sharma

For decades, the quantum computing race has been dominated by the West—deep-pocketed venture capitalists, well-equipped research labs, and governments pouring hundreds of millions into startups chasing the elusive goal of building a 1000-qubit quantum computer. But there’s a strange paradox in this pursuit: many of the theoretical problems these machines are meant to solve can’t be verified in real-world conditions. The solutions are often too abstract to test, too far from everyday relevance, and too expensive to democratise. Quantum Valley  India now has a unique opportunity to take a different path—and it’s starting to show. A "Quantum Valley" is quietly emerging near Amaravati, Andhra Pradesh; backed by three major commercial stakeholders: L&T, IBM, and TCS. These aren’t pure academic dreamers or niche physics labs. These are engineering and IT powerhouses, deeply embedded in the needs of real industries. Their entry into quantum computing signals something different....

In the dawn of the AI-native era, we are witnessing a quiet but profound shift in who gets to lead revolutions. It’s not just about charisma or conviction anymore — it’s about code, compute, and the capacity to ship. And this transition has exposed what I call The Philosopher’s Dilemma: what happens when the people with the grandest visions are not the ones who can technically realize them? When the Visionary Becomes the Passenger Two recent high-profile exits — Linda Yaccarino’s 'resignation' as CEO of X, and Vivek Ramaswamy’s 'departure' from DOGE — illustrate this tension with almost poetic clarity. Both Linda and Vivek were not accidental leaders. They were chosen for their strategic minds, narrative clarity, and ideological conviction. Yaccarino brought boardroom finesse and advertiser trust to a company reeling from Elon Musk’s chaotic overhaul. Ramaswamy brought constitutionalist rigor and philosophical coherence to a radical project like DOGE, which seemed aimed...

A new wave of strategic thinking is emerging in the AI industry, one that may shape which players survive and thrive. It’s not just about building large AI models or delivering APIs to developers. Increasingly, the future belongs to those who can build and integrate AI into consumer-facing digital products. This convergence of AI software and consumer software is likely to separate the one percent of surviving, profitable AI companies — as Vinod Khosla puts it — from the 99 percent that flame out. Three signals that has emerged over the last few months point in this direction. First, Aravind Srinivas, CEO of Perplexity AI, announced that his company's AI-powered internet browser will be no ordinary internet browsing tool, but a productivity engine. He said it will soon replace two white-collar job categories: recruiting/staffing and administrative assistants. That’s a bold claim, but it reflects a deeper shift. By integrating AI with the browser — one of the most widely used digita...

India has one of the largest school-going populations in the world — a fact that has long challenged teachers, bureaucrats, and reformers. The problems are well known: overcrowded classrooms, overburdened teachers, and a gap between curriculum goals and real comprehension levels. ChatGPT EDU ChatGPT EDU is basically an AI 'tutor' that can be deployed at scale, across digital devices. This AI tutor doesn’t spoon-feed, but engages students intelligently in completing their assignments. Instead of doing the work for them, it pushes them to think, reflect, and revise. That’s not coaching. That’s scalable tutoring. And in a country like India, tutoring is big business — not just in metros, but in tier-2 towns and beyond. But most of it is offline, expensive, and exam-focused. ChatGPT EDU represents something else entirely: daily academic companionship, delivered through AI, and guided by the classroom teacher. Why the Classroom Is the Right Entry Point If OpenAI (and other AI player...

The Real Spy Game Is No Longer Cinematic There was a time when espionage movies reflected the covert realities of the Cold War: double agents, secret messages, trench coats, and tense negotiations in dark alleys. That era is long gone. Today, real-world intelligence operations are more about clouds than cloaks—cloud servers, that is. I recently watched two new spy dramas—"Black Bag" and "The Amateur". Both were gripping, thoughtful, and full of modern anxieties. Yet, they still clung to the same old tropes: lone spies going rogue, last-minute gunfights, and impossible cross-border infiltration. The reality of espionage in 2025 is far less romantic—and far more frightening. Today’s Spying Is About Technology, Not Men in Suits Let’s state this clearly: spying today is a technological game. It is not human-first anymore. Mass data collection via satellites, drones, and fiber-optic taps makes the “field spy” almost irrelevant. Artificial intelligence tools scrape throug...

As the world hurtles deeper into the AI age, a quiet collapse is threatening one of the oldest institutions of modern civilization: the university. For generations, universities were the gateway to prosperity, offering knowledge, status, and above all, employability. But today, that promise is wearing thin—and fast. Across industries, AI is automating entry-level white-collar roles that once offered fresh graduates their first foothold in professional life. Whether it's coding, financial modeling, legal research, or content creation, AI tools are rapidly outperforming the tasks traditionally assigned to junior employees. In doing so, they are rendering many university degrees—including in lucrative disciplines like Computer Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Finance, Economics, etc—increasingly irrelevant to the job market. This isn’t a distant dystopia. It’s already here. A Dangerous Gap Between Campus and Market The fundamental problem lies in the widening gulf between what univer...

The news of TCS planning to lay off 12,000 employees by the end of this year has sent ripples across India’s tech and business media. In a sobering trend, more than 1.25 lakh IT professionals have reportedly lost their jobs in India since early 2023 — largely attributed to the accelerating AI-fication of routine tech roles. This development, while unsettling, is not entirely surprising. AI is increasingly automating mechanical entry-level and even mid-level IT work: testing, low-level coding, monitoring, support, BPM tasks — the bread & butter of India's IT giants for decades. But that’s only one part of the story. The other side is less discussed, but far more telling: GCCs (Global Capability Centres) — especially mid-tier ones — are hiring aggressively, not retrenching. While Indian IT firms are trimming their workforce in response to shrinking profit margins from commoditized work, GCCs are onboarding niche engineering talent — AI engineers, chip designers, data scientists, ...