Bengaluru-based artificial intelligence startup Sarvam has entered India’s unicorn club after raising $234 million in the first close of its $300 million Series B funding round. The latest investment values the company at $1.5 billion, underscoring growing investor confidence in India’s sovereign AI ecosystem.
Key Highlights
- Sarvam entered India’s unicorn club after raising USD 234 million at USD 1.5 billion valuation.
- HCLTech led the funding round as sovereign AI demand accelerates across industries globally.
The funding round was led by HCLTech, which committed $150 million for a 10.46% stake in the company. Global venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners also participated in the round, while existing investors Khosla Ventures and Peak XV Partners extended their support.
Fresh Capital to Accelerate Frontier AI Research
Sarvam said the newly raised capital will be used to strengthen research and development efforts around next-generation frontier AI models, particularly in agentic AI, coding assistants, and cybersecurity applications. The company also plans to expand access to large-scale computing infrastructure and accelerate deployments across enterprise and government sectors.
The investment comes at a time when enterprises and governments worldwide are increasingly seeking sovereign AI solutions that provide greater control over data, infrastructure, and model development.
Building India’s Full-Stack Sovereign AI Ecosystem
Founded by Vivek Raghavan and Pratyush Kumar, Sarvam develops AI models, inference infrastructure, and enterprise AI products designed specifically for Indian languages and use cases. The startup has recently launched foundational AI models trained entirely in India, including Sarvam 105B, Sarvam 30B, and Sarvam Vision.
The company’s conversational AI platform currently handles more than 2 million interactions daily, while its inference platform processes over 10 million API calls every day. Sarvam says platform usage has witnessed significant growth over the past few months, reflecting rising adoption across industries.
Expanding Presence Across Banking, Insurance, Government and Defence
Sarvam has secured deployments across multiple sectors, including banking, insurance, government services, and defence. Its multilingual voice platform has interacted with nearly 17 million farmers through government-led data collection initiatives. Additionally, AI-powered outreach campaigns supported policy renewals for approximately 45 million insurance customers across the country.
The company has also developed document AI and speech technologies capable of digitising millions of records and transcribing hundreds of thousands of hours of audio every month.
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Investor Interest in Sovereign AI Continues to Rise
The funding marks one of the largest investments in India’s foundational AI space and highlights the growing appetite for homegrown AI infrastructure. HCLTech’s strategic investment is expected to combine the IT major’s enterprise reach and engineering expertise with Sarvam’s AI research capabilities to create scalable AI solutions for businesses and governments globally.
The latest round comes more than two years after Sarvam raised $41 million in its Series A funding round. According to HCLTech, the startup reported unaudited revenue of Rs 45.1 crore in FY26, reflecting its growing commercial traction.
With sovereign AI emerging as a strategic priority for nations worldwide, Sarvam’s unicorn milestone positions it at the forefront of India’s ambitions to build indigenous AI models and infrastructure tailored to local languages, enterprises, and public-sector applications.
