Ola founder Bhavish Aggarwal’s startup Krutrim becomes India’s first AI unicorn

Krutrim, the AI startup founded by Ola founder Bhavish Aggarwal, has become India’s first AI unicorn after securing $50 million in funding from investors led by Matrix Partners India. 

Focused on building the complete AI computing stack, Krutrim closed the first round of funding in equity at a valuation of $1 billion, the company said. 

The funds raised will help accelerate the company’s mission to revolutionize the AI landscape, drive innovation, and expand its reach globally, it said in a press release. 

“This marks a significant milestone not only for the company but also for the Indian tech ecosystem, as Krutrim becomes India’s fastest unicorn and also its first AI unicorn,” it added. 

Krutrim, which means “artificial” in Sanskrit, is a family of large language models (LLMs), including Krutrim base and Krutrim Pro which will have multimodal, larger knowledge capabilities, and many other technical advancements for inference. 

Trained on over 2 trillion tokens, Krutrim performs well on multiple LLM evaluation benchmarks, the company said. 

“India has to build its own AI,” Aggarwal said in a statement, adding, “We are fully committed toward building the country’s first complete AI computing stack.” 

“We are thrilled to announce the successful closure of our first funding round, which 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,” he added. 

“Bhavish 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,” Avnish Bajaj, founder and managing director, Matrix Partners India, said.