Friday, 26 January 2024, Bengaluru, India
Bhavish Aggarwal, the creator of Ola, launched the AI business Krutrim, which recently announced that it has raised a $1 billion fundraising round. According to a press release, the firm, established a year ago, became a AI unicorn in India the quickest. It added that it’s the first AI startup in India to reach unicorn status.
(Image Source: https://www.cnbctv18.com/)
The $50 million “first round” in Krutrim was headed by Matrix Partners India, which has previously supported Aggarwal’s other two firms, the EV startup Ola Electric and the ride-hailing platform Ola. According to a TechCrunch report from the previous year, Aggarwal was in talks to fund $50 million for his new AI business.
The Sanskrit word for “artificial,” Krutrim, is constructing a big language model that has been trained in English and regional Indian languages. According to the business, it intends to release a voice-activated conversational AI assistant that speaks and understands several Indian languages.
Next month, it intends to release a beta version of its self-titled chatbot to consumers. Developers and businesses will then be able to use APIs. According to its website, Krutrim intends to build internal resources to produce chips optimized for AI computation. According to a previous TechCrunch article, Aggarwal’s new company will look into creating and designing chips.
Aggarwal’s third endeavor is called Krutrim. His first venture, Ola, aims for profitability and now leads the Indian ride-hailing market. Showing India’s two-wheeler electric vehicle (EV) sector, Ola Electric has submitted the necessary documentation for a $662 million IPO.
Aggarwal stated in a statement, “India has to build its own AI, and at कृत्रिम, we are fully committed to building the country’s first complete AI computing stack.” “We are delighted to announce the successful completion of our first funding round, which highlights investors’ confidence in our ability to bring about significant change from India for the world while also validating the potential of कृत्रिम’s innovative AI solutions.”
The Krutrim investment comes when investors worldwide are scrambling to find and support AI breakthroughs, betting on the idea that innovations in the field would boost productivity across a wide range of industries and that cutting-edge firms could yield generational returns.
India is home to one of the most significant startup ecosystems globally, but it has yet to make much of an effect in the battle for artificial intelligence. Indian competitors to the massive language model behemoths like Google’s Bard, Amazon-backed Anthropic, and OpenAI’s ChatGPT have not yet surfaced.
Powerhouse Reliance of India announced a partnership with Nvidia in September, announcing aspirations to develop a vast language model based on the various languages spoken in India. However, the company, led by Asia’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, has yet to introduce its AI product.
Sarvam is an AI firm that is developing a vast language model. Recently, it received backing from Peak XV and Lightspeed India.
It has shown to be an extremely costly endeavor to train a big language model. Anthropic has also raised billions from investors such as Google and Amazon, while OpenAI has raised more than $11 billion. According to a Financial Times story published on Friday, Elon Musk’s AI business, xAI, is negotiating to raise up to $6 billion at a roughly $20 billion valuation.
(Information Source: Techcrunch.com)
