Google Teams Up With Accel To Hunt For India’s Next Ai Breakouts

Google has collaborated pinch Accel to find and money India’s earliest-stage AI startups successful a first-of-its-kind collaboration for nan Google AI Futures Fund, launched earlier this year.

On Tuesday, Accel and Google announced a business to jointly put up to $2 cardinal successful each startup done Accel’s Atoms program, pinch some firms contributing up to $1 million. The 2026 cohort will attraction connected founders successful India and nan Indian diaspora building AI products from time one.

“The thought process is building AI products for billions of Indians, arsenic good arsenic supporting AI products built successful India for world markets,” Prayank Swaroop, a partner astatine Accel, told TechCrunch.

India is an appealing marketplace pinch nan world’s second-largest net and smartphone guidelines aft China and its heavy engineering talent. Still, it’s besides state that lacks frontier exemplary improvement and hasn’t produced many companies pushing nan method frontier of AI, wherever improvement remains concentrated successful nan U.S. and China.

Activity is starting to shift, however, arsenic awesome firms including OpenAI and Anthropic person precocious announced offices successful nan country, and world investors measurement up early-stage commitments. The stake is that a large, mobile-first population, expanding unreality infrastructure, and comparatively debased package costs could move India into a meaningful AI marketplace —if nan ecosystem tin construe talent and request into original investigation and products.

Swaroop said investments will beryllium geared toward conscionable astir immoderate area: creativity, entertainment, coding, and work. “The early of activity present is much encompassing, which is fundamentally SaaS, and each different applications,” he told TechCrunch. “It could moreover beryllium foundational models.”

Swaroop said nan firms will besides effort to place areas wherever ample connection models are apt to beforehand complete nan adjacent 12–24 months and look for Indian startups building successful those directions.

Alongside capital, founders will person up to $350,000 successful compute credits crossed Google Cloud, Gemini, and DeepMind, arsenic good arsenic early entree to Gemini and DeepMind models, APIs, and experimental features. The programme will see support from Google Labs and DeepMind investigation teams, co-development opportunities, monthly mentorship pinch Accel partners and Google method leads, and immersion sessions successful London and nan Bay Area, including Google I/O. Founders will besides get trading support done Accel and Google’s world channels, arsenic good arsenic entree to nan Atoms laminitis web and Google’s AI builder ecosystem, nan companies said.

“India has an unthinkable history of innovation, and we firmly judge that its founders are going to beryllium playing a starring domiciled successful nan adjacent procreation of AI-led world technology,” Jonathan Silber, co-founder and head of nan Google AI Futures Fund, told TechCrunch. “This is nan Futures Fund’s first specified collaboration anyplace successful nan world, and we chose India for a reason. Google has been a committed partner successful nan country’s travel to integer transformation, pinch multibillion-dollar investments complete nan years.”

The business follows Google’s caller $15 cardinal plan to build a 1-gigawatt information halfway and AI hub successful India. The institution besides announced a $10 cardinal digitization fund successful 2020, which has backed firms including Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio, and Walmart-owned Flipkart. Last month, Google collaborated pinch Reliance to connection millions of Jio users free entree to AI Pro.

Google launched nan AI Futures Fund successful May arsenic a dedicated conveyance to put successful and collaborate pinch AI startups globally. It has backed companies including Replit and Harvey, and has besides invested straight successful Indian startups specified arsenic Toonsutra and STAN.

Silber told TechCrunch that Google would look connected nan headdress tables of startups funded done nan business and would beryllium “a worldly presence,” but declined to stock really its equity stakes would comparison pinch Accel’s.

“This is our effort to activity pinch nan marketplace leader successful nan abstraction who knows nan state incredibly well, that tin get america talking to earlier shape founders astatine an early informative stage, that tin move nan needle,” Silber said.

While utilizing Google products is, perhaps, a fixed for applicants to this program, some Silber and Swaroop told TechCrunch location would beryllium nary requirements for startups to exclusively usage Gemini aliases immoderate different Google product.

“Sometimes, Google’s exertion is nan best. Other times, you’ll spot Anthropic aliases OpenAI. So, we’re not putting patient requirements that opportunity you tin only usage Google’s models,” said Silber. “What we’re hoping to do, though, is find a mates of different unsocial integrations that we tin do pinch these companies that leverage Google AI technology.”

Launched successful 2021, Accel’s pre-seed and seed platform, Atoms, has backed much than 40 companies that person collectively raised complete $300 cardinal successful follow-on funding. The patient expanded nan programme this year to see Indian-origin founders based overseas.

The latest collaboration comes days aft Accel’s partnership pinch Prosus to co-invest successful Atoms X, backing early-stage Indian founders building large-scale solutions pinch nan imaginable to service nan masses successful nan country.

Silber told TechCrunch that Google is not structuring nan business arsenic a pathway to early acquisitions, aliases moreover early unreality customers.

“We’re not a income team, truthful we’re not specifically looking to motion up caller unreality customers. That’s not our goal,” he said. “In position of KPIs, our nonsubjective is simply to spot nan adjacent activity of invention successful nan AI abstraction coming retired of India.”