Bengaluru-based artificial intelligence startup Sarvam AI has raised $234 million in the first close of its Series B funding round, marking one of the largest funding rounds for an Indian AI company to date. The investment values the company at $1.5 billion and is led by HCLTech, one of India’s largest technology services firms, alongside global venture capital investor Bessemer Venture Partners. Existing backers Khosla Ventures and Peak XV Partners also participated in the round. The funding comes at a time when India is seeking to strengthen its domestic AI capabilities amid a global race to build advanced AI systems. Sarvam AI, founded in 2023 by Vivek Raghavan and Pratyush Kumar, has emerged as one of the country’s most prominent AI startups by focusing on large language models (LLMs), speech technologies, and AI infrastructure tailored for Indian languages and use cases. The company said it plans to use the fresh capital to train its next generation of frontier AI models, expand research in agentic AI, coding and cybersecurity systems, scale computing infrastructure and accelerate deployments across enterprises and government organisations. The investment also shows growing confidence among large Indian enterprises in the commercial potential of AI. HCLTech’s participation is particularly significant because it combines a major technology services company with a startup developing foundational AI technologies. According to the company, the partnership aims to bring together Sarvam’s AI models and infrastructure with HCLTech’s engineering expertise and enterprise customer base. Sarvam co-founder Raghavan said the company’s objective is building AI that serves India’s needs at scale. He added the latest investment would help the company accelerate its efforts to create world-class AI capabilities from India while addressing local requirements. The emphasis on local requirements has been central to Sarvam’s strategy since its inception. Unlike many global AI companies that primarily develop models optimised for English, Sarvam focuses heavily on Indian languages and voice-based interactions. This is particularly relevant in a country where hundreds of millions of people prefer regional languages and where voice remains a more natural interface than text for many users. Raghavan previously worked on India’s digital public infrastructure initiatives such as Aadhaar, while Kumar, a prominent AI researcher associated with AI4Bharat, a project focused on Indian language technologies. Their backgrounds combined expertise in large-scale public digital systems and advanced AI research, helping position the startup at the intersection of technology innovation and public utility. Sarvam’s ambitions extend beyond building chatbots or consumer applications. The company is pursuing a full-stack AI approach. This means developing the underlying models, training infrastructure, deployment platforms and end-user applications rather than focusing on a single la
