Sarvam AI valued at $1.5B becomes India's newest AI unicorn

Sarvam AI, a startup building a sovereign artificial intelligence stack for India, has become the country's newest AI unicorn after raising $234 million in a funding round that values the company at $1.5 billion. The company announced the first close of its Series B round on June 15, 2026.

The investment is led by Indian IT services giant HCLTech, which is contributing $150 million for a 10.46% stake. Bessemer Venture Partners also participated as a new investor, with continued support from existing backers Khosla Ventures and Peak XV Partners. Sarvam aims to raise a total of $300 million in this round.

Founded in August 2023 by Vivek Raghavan and Pratyush Kumar, veterans of the IIT Madras-based language AI initiative AI4Bharat, Sarvam focuses on developing AI models from scratch for India's 22 official languages and specific use cases. The fresh capital will fund research into its next frontier model for agentic, coding, and cybersecurity applications, as well as expand access to computing infrastructure to scale deployments.

The partnership with HCLTech is strategic, aiming to combine Sarvam's AI research with HCLTech's enterprise relationships, engineering workforce, and...