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An India media startup got the internet talking after adopting AI enabled it to double sales in a year to cross $500 million in projected annual revenue, but at what cost? Its platform appears full of slop, which raises questions over who its customers are and how much AI generated content they will put up with.
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Can AI slop lay the pathway to a billion-dollar funding round and IPO?
AI is helping one of India’s media businesses supersize its production and reach global markets like never before. Pocket FM, a platform for audio content, made waves last week when it claimed to have doubled its annual revenue rate (ARR) to over $500 million in just one year, but at what cost does embracing AI for media come at?
The company started out in 2018 to fill the time commuting to and from work with podcasts and other audio entertainment shows, raising close to $200 million from investors like Tencent and Lightspeed. Its last round in 2024 came at a $750 million value, and it claims to have more than 250 million listeners from across over 20 countries.
Pocket FM monetises using advertising and a pay-as-you-go model requiring users to buy credit to access shows, as it found an all-encompassing subscription like Netflix and Spotify didn’t land. Pocket FM claims more than 550,000 writers registered to its service. Writers release content and take a cut of revenues made. If the company sees a writer with promise, they back them with resources and help.
That was the model, but adopting AI has enabled it to massively increase its library of content, which it says are driving audience growth, retention and monetisation. Previously, making 100 hours of content took a year, but that can now be done in just one day, CEO Rohan Nayak told TechCrunch. AI now “powers” 93% of the platform’s content, he added.
The move toward AI has also led to a notable increase in the amount of content Pocket FM produces. Its more than 550,000 creators are now producing about 2.5 million hours of AI-powered content a year, Nayak said. Two years ago, the startup’s entire catalog comprised about 100,000 hours of content. The platform has overall built a library of more than 770,000 audio series.
Indeed, a deal with AI audio startup ElevenLabs helps Pocket FM writers make audio content “with one click.” This all screams AI slop, and quite justifiably. I am not the target audience, but Pocket FM’s service does not appeal to me in the slightest when I open it.
Programme tiles are clearly AI generated. When I did open an episode, the narration was in a voice easily identifiable as not human with video that was also obviously not made by a person. Pocket FM has joined the bandwagon of AI-generated microdramas, which do all of the above in vertical frames with episodes of up to 90-120 seconds.
This is not my taste, although the company claims it is working. According to the TechCrunch story, its Pocket Saga app has reached a $15 million ARR just three months after launch with the US its only market right now. The US accounts for 70% of revenue, with revenue in Germany and France reaching $21 million in 11 months and $10 million in three months, respectively, Nayak wrote on LinkedIn.
“Our Bet [is that] In ~3 years we will be able to produce [a] Naruto-like series for $1000,” he added. “Netflix has to spend $17 billion to find 100 Blockbusters per year. What happens when you can produce 1 million high quality shows for $1 billion?”
Pocket FM may have found a way to make money from AI slop videos and audio, but there’s no valid comparison to be made to Netflix, which is cinematic in contrast to Pocket FM. Its revenue success is hardly panacea to the creative industry, which has been polarised by generative AI, despite recent agreements like ByteDance and the Motion Picture Association inking a copyright pact.
It also hasn’t been plain sailing for Pocket FM. The company let go of more than 100 employees in May, that’s around 10% of its workforce, with reports that more cuts would come.
So why is the company speaking up now? If you want to get cynical, it has been streamlining its costs to look good for investors.
It was linked with a $100-$120 million funding round in April. In June, it was reported to have begun discussions to shift its holding structure back to India (from the US) to enable a domestic IPO. Nayak told TechCrunch that there’s no immediate plan for a listing in India.
The founders will want to position their business as a global and AI-first company to maximise their valuation, and potential for a US IPO. The data looks promising on paper, until you open the app and use the product.
America’s AI giants are poaching from big tech to grow in Asia
OpenAI and Anthropic are the new big tech, and that’s showing with its hiring in Asia as the duo rush to expand in the continent.
We wrote before about how OpenAI is diving into the opportunities in Southeast Asia, working closely with the government and public sectors in Singapore and opening a startup accelerator programme alongside the Thai government. Anthropic has taken a different approach by focusing on the more mature market opportunities in South Korea and Japan, but it is now increasing its efforts in India and Singapore, Rest of World reports. It is poaching from the likes of Google, Microsoft and Amazon in proof of what is a new tech world order in Asia.
The playbook is very much classic US corporate tech, with a focus on public policy and other relationship building roles, as well as sales. OpenAI is diving into the experimental potential, through its work with the Singapore government with training opportunities and public-private partnerships, not to mention the Thailand programme, which is something it hasn’t tried anywhere else in the world.
Deals
Bengaluru-based Swish raised $24 million to expand its own kitchen and delivery network to compete with 10-minute food-delivery services [Economic Times]
US belt and road? The Trump administration will lend nearly $100 million to Africell, Africa’s only American-owned telecom operator, to deploy mobile-network equipment from US and allied suppliers [Reuters]
Markets
Tencent-backed Chinese AI chipmaker Enflame surged 206% in its Shanghai debut after its retail offering drew orders for more than 6,000 times the shares available [CNBC]
Chinese AI developer Z.ai is raising about $5 billion through a Hong Kong share placement and convertible bond sale [Reuters]
AI and Chips
We recently critiqued Moonshot AI’s $50 billion valuation with $300 million ARR but now Bloomberg reported that figure has jumped to over $1 billion as of August. A very timely leak as the company plots an IPO [Bloomberg]
We also know Chinese AI firms need to make money, so here’s Bloomberg again looking at how China’s AI sector is moving from competing on large models to commercialising AI agents [Bloomberg]
Newly-public Unitree Robotics grew humanoid-robot revenue eightfold to $129 million in 2025 [Ars Technica]
Flipkart’s Super.money is rolling out AI agents to its 20 million users to shop on Flipkart and buy gold at user-set prices [Bloomberg]
Policy
South Korea expanded its espionage laws to cover theft of sensitive economic and technology information, including chip secrets, with those acting for foreign countries now facing up to 30 years in prison [FT]
China set a 2030 target for large-scale deployment of autonomous vehicles on highways, urban expressways and selected city roads [Reuters]
The European Commission is preparing legislation to close enforcement gaps that let illegal goods sold on e-commerce platforms reach EU consumers [Euronews]
In other news:
Tokyo startup MW plans to sell its first robot-equipped home by 2028, embedding robotic arms in ceilings and walls rather than building humanoids [Bloomberg]
A misconfigured database exposed more than 220 million passenger and crew records, including passport numbers and flight details, from travellers flying to, from or through Vietnam between January 2017 and April 2026 [Bleeping Computer]
Amazon Pay India is considering travel insurance and other products to push beyond payments after initially launching health insurance [Reuters]
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