Sarvam AI raises $41 mn led by Lightspeed, largest by an Indian AI startup

Indian generative AI startup Sarvam AI on Thursday said it has raised $41 million in its Series A round led by Lightspeed and supported by Peak XV Partners and Vinod Khosla-run Khosla Ventures.

This represents the largest raise at this stage for an Indian AI startup.

Founded by Vivek Raghavan and Pratyush Kumar, Sarvam AI plans to develop the “full-stack” for Generative AI ranging from research-led innovations in training custom AI models to an enterprise-grade platform for authoring and deployment.

“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, Lightspeed.

Sarvam AI believes that its full-stack approach will accelerate adoption of GenAI in India, especially given that enterprises see the potential of GenAI but are grappling with how to leverage it for their business. Sarvam AI will train 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.

Finally, the company aims to create population-scale impact layering GenAI on top of the highly successful India stack specifically for public-good applications.

“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,” said Raghavan.

Vinod Khosla, a pioneer in Silicon Valley AI investments including his early support for OpenAI, said that “we see several countries having sovereign efforts to build GenAI models given its strategic importance. We need companies like Sarvam AI to develop deep expertise for building AI in and for India.”

Led by its successful founders, Sarvam AI is putting together a high-quality team.

“The race towards ever more powerful AI is both an exciting and divisive one. We named our company Sarvam, which in Sanskrit means ‘all’, as we are intentionally invested in technical and ecosystem innovations that make this technology accessible to all,” said Kumar.