Researchers at India’s AI4Bharat are raising $12 million from venture capital firms Peak XV and Lightspeed Venture for an artificial intelligence startup, according to Reuters report.
The larger-than-usual seed funding round underscores the growing interest in generative AI, after OpenAI’s ChatGPT dazzled users with its ability to engage in human-like conversations. Most seed rounds are usually up to $1 million to $2 million.
Vivek Raghavan and Pratyush Kumar, who worked on developing AI models for speech recognition and translation at AI4Bharat, are launching a new venture called Sarvam that will develop custom-made large language models (LLMs) for India-centric use-cases, the sources said.
Peak XV and Lightspeed did not respond to Reuters requests for comment.
LLMs are computer algorithms that understand and generate text in a human-like fashion. They power virtual assistants widely in use on smartphones and the Internet.
