Ai4Bharat Researchers To Raise $12 Million From Peak Xv, Lightspeed For Own Firm

Researchers at India's AI4Bharat are raising $12 million from venture capital firms Peak XV and Lightspeed Venture for an artificial intelligence startup, according to three people familiar with the matter. The larger-than-usual seed funding round underscores the growing interest in generative AI, after OpenAI's ChatGPT dazzled users with its ability to engage in human-like conversations. Most seed rounds are usually up to $1 million to $2 million. Vivek Raghavan and Pratyush Kumar, who worked on developing AI models for speech recognition and translation at AI4Bharat, are launching a new venture called Sarvam that will develop custom-made large language models (LLMs) for India-centric use-cases, the sources said