Unleashing the Power of AI: Insights from Peak XV’s Latest Surge Cohorts with Rajan Anandan

Peak XV Opens Applications for 10th Cohort of Surge Accelerator Programme

Peak XV, a prominent venture capital firm, invites startups to join the tenth cohort of its early-stage accelerator programme, Surge, with a special focus on young artificial intelligence (AI) companies.

Rajan Anandan, Managing Director at Peak XV, highlighted the growing emphasis on AI within Surge. He noted, “In recent cohorts, about a third of our companies have been AI-focused, and we expect this number to rise.”

Anandan emphasized the importance of the founding team, especially in AI. “We’re looking for deeply technical founders with profound insights into the problems they’re solving,” he told Moneycontrol.

The application process, which began on July 11, will remain open until August 15. Selected startups will participate in the programme from October to February, with in-person sessions in Bengaluru and the San Francisco Bay Area and the rest conducted online.

Peak XV’s Early Bets on AI Startups

Surge will invest up to $3 million in seed capital for each participating company.

Since its split from Sequoia Capital in 2023, Peak XV has remained a significant tech backer in India and Southeast Asia, with Rs 16,000 crore available for investment across various stages and sectors.

To attract more AI startups, Peak XV has disclosed a list of 28 AI-focused companies it has funded at the seed stage since 2019. Notably, 27 of these startups emerged post-COVID-19, with 12-13 securing funding since early 2023, following the launch of ChatGPT.

These companies span the AI tech stack, including Sarvam and Consequent in foundation models, Atlan and RedBrick in tooling and data infrastructure, Invideo and Pix.ai in consumer and prosumer segments, Relevance, Interpret and Gan in enterprise AI, and Arintra and Attentive in vertical AI.

Sarvam gained attention in late 2023 by securing $41 million from investors such as Khosla Ventures, Lightspeed, and Peak XV to train large language models in Indian languages. In May 2023, Atlan raised $105 million in a Series C funding round led by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund GIC.

“We’re seeing exciting early activity in data infrastructure and AI tooling, as well as in applications,” Anandan said. “We believe the most exciting opportunities for companies from India and Asia targeting global markets lie in the application layer.”

In Surge’s ninth cohort, announced in October, 10 of the 13 startups focused on AI and deeptech, including semiconductor chip design companies like InCore and Mindgrove.

“In our ninth cohort, we evaluated close to 5,000 companies to select about a dozen,”

Anandan said. “We typically partner with about 0.2% of the companies we evaluate, and we expect this trend to continue.”

The past three cohorts reflect the dynamic ecosystem in India, Southeast Asia, and

Australia. Surge partners with a diverse range of tech and tech-enabled companies across AI, software, infrastructure, consumer brands, travel, gaming, healthcare, education, fintech, financial services, and deep-tech sectors such as advanced manufacturing, semiconductors, mobility, green hydrogen, and space.