Sarvam AI raises $41 million from Lightspeed Ventures, others

Artificial intelligence technology startup Sarvam AI on Thursday said it raised USD 41 million, about Rs 342 crore, in a funding round led by Lightspeed Ventures. Peak XV Partners and Khosla Ventures also participated in the funding round.

According to Sarvam AI, the amount of USD 41 million is the largest raised by an Indian AI startup in series A round -- an early stage of a startup.

"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. Lightspeed will be close partners and contribute with our deep capital stack and learnings from our global platform," Lightspeed Ventures partner Hemant Mohapatra said in a statement.

Bengaluru-based 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.

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

"The Sarvam AI team led by Vivek and Pratyush is among the highest calibre AI teams we have seen emerge from India. Large scale adoption of AI in India will require not only building uniquely Indian use cases but also delivering them at prices that everyone can afford and we believe the Sarvam team is best positioned to accomplish this," Peak XV Managing Director Harshjit Sethi said.

Sarvam AI will focus on India's unique needs. This includes 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.

"I have seen first hand 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," Sarvam AI co-founder Vivek Raghavan said.