Five-month-old Indian AI startup snags $41m from Lightspeed, others

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Artificial intelligence startup Sarvam AI on Thursday said it has raised $41 million in a Series A funding round led by Lightspeed, barely five months into operation.

The generative AI firm, founded by Vivek Raghavan and Pratyush Kumar, also saw participation from Peak XV Partners and Khosla Ventures in the round, which they claim is the largest fundraising at this stage for an Indian AI startup.

Sarvam AI plans to develop the “full-stack” for generative AI ranging from and focus on training AI models to support the diverse set of Indian languages and voice-first interfaces. The company will also work with Indian enterprises to co-build domain-specific AI models on their data.

The investment in Sarvam aligns with the global trend of backing AI companies’ breakthroughs, as investors anticipate that AI advancements will boost efficiency across industries, with leading startups delivering substantial returns for them.

“Having backed some of the most influential names in GenAI globally, we are excited by Sarvam AI’s unique approach in combining model innovation and application development to build population-scale solutions for India,” said Hemant Mohapatra, Partner at Lightspeed.

In other prominent deals, AI and analytics solutions firm Course5 Intelligence raked in $53 million, while AI-enabled pipeline acceleration startup RevSure.AI has raised $10 million in its seed funding round.

Earlier this week, SenseAI Ventures launched a $25-million fund to invest in India’s AI startup ecosystem.

“I have seen firsthand the enormous value in innovating at foundational layers and deploying at population scale. India has demonstrated that it can harness technology differently, and with GenAI, we have an opportunity to reimagine how this technology can add value to people’s lives,” Raghavan said.

The big funding round for Sarvam AI also comes as cheque sizes in the Indian startup ecosystem continue to become fatter in the last couple of years. While the trend is visible across all stages of startup funding, it is more pronounced in the early stages.

From an average seed funding size of $696,000 in 2020, it has risen to $1.4 million in 2023. Similarly, from $4 million in an average Series A round in 2020, it has now crossed $10 million, according to data from Tracxn.

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