SINGAPORE: Sarvam, an Indian AI startup that has developed large language models (LLMs), on Tuesday announced that it has raised US$234 million in the first close of its US$300 million series B round of funding at a valuation of US$1.5 billion.
The funding round was led by HCLTech, an Indian IT services and technology company, that invested US$150 million to acquire 10.5 per cent stake in Sarvam.
The funding round was co-led by US-based venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners, with the participation of other existing investors in the firm such as Khosla Ventures and Peak XV Partners.
HCLTech said it will use its expertise, client network, data, software, and engineering strength to help Sarvam build a strong AI ecosystem for India and other markets.
The Indian IT services company in turn will use Sarvam’s help to develop specific language models and AI solutions for its global client base, and accelerate the development of sovereign AI solutions for governments and regulated industries, HCLTech added.
The investment will fund Sarvam’s research on training its next frontier model for agentic AI, coding and cybersecurity use-cases, said the company.
In February, Sarvam has released two foundational models – a 105-billion-parameter (105B) model alongside a 30B model – which it said was all trained from scratch in India.
In 2024, Microsoft partnered with the Indian startup to support voice-based generative AI applications, without disclosing financial details.
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