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Bessemer Eyes Stake in Sarvam AI’s $250 Mn Funding Round; Valuation Hits $1.5 Bn
Bessemer Eyes Stake in Sarvam AI’s $250 Mn Funding Round; Valuation Hits $1.5 Bn
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By cioNetworks - 02 April 2026
Sarvam AI, the Bengaluru-based AI startup, is set to raise $200–$250 million in a new funding round, with Bessemer Venture Partners showing strong interest in joining the deal. Existing participants NVIDIA and HCLTech are also in discussions to invest, according to sources.
The round is expected to value the company at around $1.5 billion post-money, marking a sevenfold increase in valuation within just two years. If finalised, it would become the largest private funding round for an Indian startup this year and the biggest investment in a pure-play Indian AI company to date.
While Accel, initially reported as a participant, has stepped away from the deal, Bessemer’s interest is being led by partner Sameer Dholakia, who has previously invested in companies like Anthropic and Alphabet’s Waymo.
Sarvam AI is positioning itself as a strong contender in the global AI landscape, particularly in Indian language models. Co-founder Pratyush Kumar stated that the company’s models are not only more cost-efficient than competitors like Gemini Flash, but also outperform them in several benchmarks—especially in Indic language performance, even when compared with more advanced models like Gemini 2.5 Flash.
The funding momentum follows Sarvam’s recent launch of its Sarvam-30B and Sarvam-105B large language models, both developed entirely in India and unveiled at the India AI Impact Summit in February.
The startup previously raised $41 million in a Series A round in December 2023, led by Lightspeed Ventures, and is now rapidly scaling its ambitions to become a leading player in the global AI ecosystem.
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