Google teams up with Accel to hunt for India’s next AI breakouts

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

On Tuesday, Accel and Google announced a concern to jointly put up to $2 cardinal successful each startup done Accel’s Atoms program, with some firms contributing up to $1 million. The 2026 cohort volition absorption connected founders successful India and the Indian diaspora gathering AI products from time one.

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

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

Activity is starting to shift, however, arsenic large firms including OpenAI and Anthropic person precocious announced offices successful the country, and planetary investors measurement up early-stage commitments. The stake is that a large, mobile-first population, expanding unreality infrastructure, and comparatively debased bundle costs could crook India into a meaningful AI marketplace —if the ecosystem tin construe endowment and request into archetypal probe and products.

Swaroop said investments volition beryllium geared toward conscionable astir immoderate area: creativity, entertainment, coding, and work. “The aboriginal of enactment present is much encompassing, which is fundamentally SaaS, and each different applications,” helium told TechCrunch. “It could adjacent beryllium foundational models.”

Swaroop said the firms volition besides effort to place areas wherever ample connection models are apt to beforehand implicit the adjacent 12–24 months and look for Indian startups gathering successful those directions.

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

“India has an unthinkable past of innovation, and we firmly judge that its founders are going to beryllium playing a starring relation successful the adjacent procreation of AI-led planetary technology,” Jonathan Silber, co-founder and manager of the Google AI Futures Fund, told TechCrunch. “This is the Futures Fund’s archetypal specified collaboration anyplace successful the world, and we chose India for a reason. Google has been a committed spouse successful the country’s travel to integer transformation, with multibillion-dollar investments implicit the years.”

The concern follows Google’s caller $15 cardinal plan to physique 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 partnered with Reliance to connection millions of Jio users free entree to AI Pro.

Google launched the AI Futures Fund successful May arsenic a dedicated conveyance to put successful and collaborate with 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 the headdress tables of startups funded done the concern and would beryllium “a worldly presence,” but declined to stock however its equity stakes would comparison with Accel’s.

“This is our effort to enactment with the marketplace person successful the abstraction who knows the state incredibly well, that tin get america talking to earlier signifier founders astatine an aboriginal informative stage, that tin determination the needle,” Silber said.

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

“Sometimes, Google’s exertion is the best. Other times, you’ll spot Anthropic oregon OpenAI. So, we’re not putting steadfast requirements that accidental you tin lone usage Google’s models,” said Silber. “What we’re hoping to do, though, is find a mates of antithetic unsocial integrations that we tin bash with these companies that leverage Google AI technology.”

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

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

Silber told TechCrunch that Google is not structuring the concern arsenic a pathway to aboriginal acquisitions, oregon adjacent aboriginal 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,” helium said. “In presumption of KPIs, our nonsubjective is simply to spot the adjacent question of innovation successful the AI abstraction coming retired of India.”