Indian generative AI start-up Sarvam AI raises $41 million in Series A

Indian generative AI start-up Sarvam AI has raised $41 million in a Series A round led by Lightspeed, Peak XV Partners and Khosla Ventures.

The start-up plans to develop a “full stack” for generative AI, ranging from research-led innovations in training custom AI models to an enterprise-grade platform for authoring and deployment. Moreover, according to the company, the full-stack approach will accelerate the adoption of GenAI in India.

“Having backed some of the most influential names in GenAI globally, we are excited by the start-up’s approach to combining model innovation and application development to build population-scale solutions for India. We will be close partners and contribute with our deep capital stack and learnings from our global platform,” said Hemant Mohapatra, Partner, Lightspeed.

It will focus on training AI models to support a diverse set of Indian languages and voice-first interfaces. Further, it intends to work with Indian enterprises to co-build domain-specific AI models on their data. Vivek Raghavan, co-founder of Sarvam AI, said, “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.”

One of the early supporters of OpenAI, Vinod Khosla, a pioneer in Silicon Valley AI investments, said, “We see several countries having sovereign efforts to build GenAI models given their strategic importance. We need such startups to develop deep expertise for building AI in and for India.”

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