India’s GenAI Funding Summer Begins

This week, India witnessed its first AI Unicorn, Krutrim AI, which raised $50 million in funding from Matrix Partners and other investors to build India’s first complete AI computing stack. Another AI startup, RagaAI, built by former NVIDIA and Ola exec Gaurav Agarwal, came out of stealth mode with the announcement of $4.7 million in funding to build the world's first automated platform to fix AI models from failing.

The funding season has barely begun, with Indian VCs sitting on $20 billion of dry powder, and AI, notably GenAI, is clearly on everyone's mind. A majority of the VCs are slowly transitioning to become AI leaders, not just companies. 

"India has $20 billion of dry powder, that is INR 1.6 lakh crore of venture capital dry powder, waiting to be invested. The number one thing we're all going after is AI," said Peak XV Partners MD Rajan Anandan, adding that it has 400 active companies in India, of which about 100 are software product companies targeting the world, and 25 are AI companies.