Krutrim, an artificial intelligence (AI) startup launched by Ola founder and Chairman Bhavish Aggarwal, has announced that it has raised $50 million at a valuation of $1 billion, making it the first startup unicorn in the country in 2024. This investment comes shortly after the six-month-old AI startup Sarvam AI raised $41 million across seed and Series A financing, signalling the rising investor interest in AI startups. Krutrim mentioned that it is the first AI unicorn in the country.
According to an official statement, Krutrim plans to use the funds raised to expand its reach globally, drive innovation, and accelerate the company’s goal to reshape the AI landscape.
“This funding round not only validates the potential of Krutrim’s innovative AI solutions but also underscores the confidence investors have in our ability to drive meaningful change out of India for the world,” said Aggarwal in the statement.
Krutrim, which means “artificial” in Sanskrit, aims to focus on building the entire AI computing stack. In December 2023, the company has launched its first set of multilingual large language models (LLM), also called Krutrim.
Furthermore, Krutrim Pro, launching in Q4 FY 2024, will be multimodal in nature, which means it can understand and work with different formats, including text, audio, image, and video, at the same time. It will also have larger knowledge, advanced problem-solving and task execution capabilities, as per available sources.
“Bhavish (Aggarwal) has consistently brought cutting edge tech innovation to India at scale with Ola and Ola Electric – and now excitingly with Krutrim to power the journey of ‘Viksit Bharat’ digitally” said Avnish Bajaj, founder and managing director, Matrix Partners India, in the statement.
