Lightspeed, Peak XV and Khosla Ventures infuse $41 mn into Sarvam AI to build India-specific Gen AI models

Sarvam AI, a generative AI start-up focusing on India’s unique needs, has raised $41 million in a Series A round led by Lightspeed with participation from Peak XV Partners and Khosla Ventures. The funding round marks the largest early-stage fundraise for an Indian AI start-up.

Sarvam AI, founded by Vivek Raghavan and Pratyush Kumar, said it 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 believes that its full-stack approach will accelerate adoption of Gen AI in India, especially given that enterprises see the potential of GenAI but are grappling with how to leverage it for their business.

The company will concentrate on addressing India's distinct requirements by training AI models to accommodate a diverse range of Indian languages and voice-first interfaces, collaborating with local enterprises to develop domain-specific AI models using their data, and ultimately aiming to achieve population-scale impact by integrating Gen AI into the successful India stack, with a focus on public-good applications.

"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 Gen AI we have an opportunity to reimagine how this technology can add value to people’s lives,” Co-founder Vivek Raghavan said.  

“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,” Hemant Mohapatra, Partner, Lightspeed, said.

Domiciled in India, Sarvam AI hopes to contribute to India’s strategic goals in this space. Vinod Khosla, a pioneer in Silicon Valley AI investments, including his early support for OpenAI, said, “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.”

GenAI is expected to experience exponential growth, with CEOs worldwide prioritising investment in it as revealed by the KPMG CEO Outlook 2023 survey. The survey shows that 70 per cent are investing heavily in generative AI as their competitive edge for the future, with most (52 per cent) expecting to see a return on their investment in three to five years. In fact, increased profitability was cited as the number one benefit of implementing generative AI within an organisation (22 per cent). According to recent research released today by Boston Consulting Group (BCG), among 1,000 respondents in India, 60.1 per cent expressed optimism among their top two sentiments regarding AI's impact on work, and 72.8 per cent believe that the rewards of generative AI outweigh the risks.