Sarvam Enters Unicorn Club with $234 Million Funding Round
BENGALURU: Indian AI startup Sarvam has secured $234 million in a funding round led by HCLTech and Bessemer Venture Partners, elevating its valuation to $1.5 billion and marking its entry into the unicorn club. The funding round also included contributions from existing investors Khosla Ventures and Peak XV Partners. HCLTech emerged as the lead strategic investor, injecting $150 million for a 10.4% stake in Sarvam.
Investor Interest in AI Ecosystem
This funding comes amid heightened interest in India’s AI sector. Earlier this year, Neysa, an AI cloud platform, raised $1.2 billion in a funding round led by Blackstone to enhance its AI infrastructure. Sarvam co-founder Pratyush Kumar stated that the new capital will be used to expand compute infrastructure, recruit AI talent, and develop new products, including an AI-assisted coding platform to compete with global players like Claude and Codex.
Kumar emphasized that HCLTech’s investment will facilitate Sarvam’s international expansion and strengthen collaborations with various enterprises and technology partners. HCLTech CEO C Vijayakumar noted that the partnership aims to merge Sarvam’s AI research capabilities with HCLTech’s global reach, creating a comprehensive AI platform for enterprises and governments.
Rapid Revenue Growth
Sarvam’s revenue has seen significant growth, increasing from minimal levels in FY24 to Rs 1.5 crore in FY25 and Rs 45.1 crore in FY26, according to unaudited financials. This surge reflects the rising adoption of its AI solutions. Kumar asserted that Sarvam has proven India’s ability to develop competitive AI models with robust Indian-language capabilities. The company’s next steps will focus on creating end-to-end products in agentic AI and coding AI.
Kumar also mentioned that Sarvam is scaling its Voice AI and Document AI offerings, which are gaining traction among enterprises. The startup recently launched a 105-billion-parameter foundational large language model (LLM) along with a suite of commercial tools. Additionally, Sarvam has gained access to one of the first Blackwell-based AI compute clusters in India, designed for enhanced AI training and inference workloads. Kumar stated that while Sarvam does not own the data center infrastructure, it manages the software stack necessary for efficient operation, emphasizing the strategic importance of having compute resources located in India to reduce costs and reliance on foreign infrastructure.
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