Indian artificial intelligence startup Sarvam is in talks to raise $200 million to $250 million in a new funding round, according to a Moneycontrol report. The round is expected to see participation from global chipmaker Nvidia, venture capital firm Accel, and IT services major HCLTech. If the deal goes through, the Bengaluru-based startup could be valued at around $1.5 billion.
This proposed investment is reportedly seen as strategic for all the parties involved. Sarvam AI already relies on Nvidia hardware to train its artificial intelligence models, making the chip giant’s participation a natural fit. HCLTech’s potential entry as an investor could help the IT major tap into Sarvam’s generative AI capabilities and deploy them across enterprise clients at scale. Meanwhile, Accel’s involvement is expected to provide growth capital and support Sarvam’s expansion into global markets.
According to the report, people aware of the discussions said negotiations are still underway, and the final size of the round could change as additional investors have shown interest in backing the startup. Although there has been no official announcement yet from Sarvam or Nvidia and Accel.
Sarvam last raised $41 million in its Series A funding round in December 2023, led by Lightspeed Ventures, with participation from Peak XV Partners and Khosla Ventures. Notably, investor interest in the startup has increased in recent months after Sarvam launched two large language models at the India AI Impact Summit held in New Delhi in February.
What is Sarvam AI
Sarvam AI is an Indian artificial intelligence startup focused on building homegrown foundational AI models and a full-stack generative AI platform for enterprises and developers. The company works on everything from training large language models to providing tools for deploying AI applications at scale, with a strong focus on Indian languages and local use cases.
Founded in July 2023 by Vivek Raghavan and Pratyush Kumar, who previously worked on the AI4Bharat project backed by Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani, Sarvam aims to create indigenous AI systems that can compete with global models while being better suited for India’s linguistic and cultural diversity.
The startup recently launched two large language models built from scratch in India, with 30-billion and 105-billion parameters. According to co-founder Pratyush Kumar, these models are designed to be more cost-efficient than some global alternatives while delivering stronger performance in several benchmarks, especially for Indian language tasks.
