Funding · AI & Deep Tech

Sarvam AI raises $300M at $1.5B valuation

What they do

Sarvam AI builds a full-stack generative AI platform with custom models and enterprise tools

It raised $300M in a round led by HCLTech and Bessemer, with Nvidia and others participating

The round is the largest ever for a pure-play Indian AI startup and values the company at $1.5B

Sarvam AI is raising a $300M funding round led by HCLTech ($150M) and Bessemer Venture Partners ($50M).
The remaining $100M comes from Nvidia, Prosperity7, Activate, Glade Brook, and existing backers on a pro rata basis.
The round values Sarvam AI at $1.5B post-money, a 7X increase from its 2023 valuation.
The round is expected to close in the coming weeks.
Earlier talks had HCLTech and Nvidia leading a $250M round, but Accel passed and Bessemer stepped in.
This is the largest private market funding for an Indian startup in 2026.
It is also the largest capital infusion into a pure-play Indian AI startup to date.

HCLTech's investment is a rare instance of a legacy Indian IT services firm backing a homegrown AI startup.
Indian IT stocks are under pressure due to AI disruption from Anthropic and OpenAI expanding enterprise offerings.
The IndiaAI Mission has a ₹10,000 crore (~$1B) fund for a sovereign foundational model, and Sarvam AI received ₹99 crore ($11M) in GPU subsidies.
Competitors building foundational AI models in India include Gnani.ai and BharatGen.

Sarvam AI is a full-stack generative AI platform offering research-led custom model training and enterprise-grade authoring and deployment.
Its products include Voice Agents, Content Agents, Doc Agents, and Work Agents, plus APIs for Text-to-Speech, Speech-to-Text, Translation, and Document Digitisation.
It has trained 30B-parameter and 105B-parameter LLMs from scratch in India, launched at the India AI Impact Summit in February 2026.
Co-founder Pratyush Kumar says its models are cheaper than Gemini Flash and outperform on many benchmarks, with stronger Indian language performance than Gemini 2.5 Flash.
Sarvam AI has served 10B+ tokens with median latency under 100ms and a 99.9% uptime SLA.
Deployment options include Sarvam Cloud, Private Cloud (VPC), and On-Premises (air-gapped).
It is compliant with SOC 2 Type II, ISO 27001, and DPDP, with role-based access, audit trails, and data residency controls.

HCLTech (lead) — A global IT services company investing $150M.
Bessemer Venture Partners (co-lead) — A US venture capital firm; discussions led by US Partner Sameer Dholakia.
Nvidia (participated) — A leading AI chipmaker.
Prosperity7 (participated) — The venture arm of Saudi Aramco.
Activate (participated) — A venture capital firm.
Glade Brook (participated) — A venture capital firm.
Khosla Ventures (existing) — A venture capital firm and existing backer.
Lightspeed (existing) — A venture capital firm and existing backer.
Peak XV Partners (existing) — A venture capital firm and existing backer.

Product: Foundation models and agentic AI systems with voice capabilities and enterprise applications
Customers: Enterprise customers across finance, aviation, telecom and government sectors
How it makes money: SaaS and licensing model for AI models and enterprise AI applications
What sets it apart: India-built sovereign AI stack with focus on cost-effective deployment and localization