Sarvam becomes India’s newest AI unicorn with $234 million funding round led by HCLTech
Sarvam becomes India’s newest AI unicorn with $234 million funding round led by HCLTech
Sarvam 获得 HCLTech 领投的 2.34 亿美元融资，成为印度最新 AI 独角兽
Sarvam has raised $234 million at a $1.5 billion valuation, the company announced on Monday. The Bengaluru-based company is now India’s newest AI unicorn, as governments and companies seek greater control over critical artificial intelligence technologies and computing infrastructure. Sarvam 周一宣布，公司已完成 2.34 亿美元融资，估值达到 15 亿美元。随着各国政府和企业寻求对关键人工智能技术及计算基础设施的更大掌控权，这家总部位于班加罗尔的公司现已成为印度最新的 AI 独角兽。
And $150 million of that money will come from HCLTech, the IT subsidiary of Indian conglomerate HCL Group and lead strategic investor in the round. Bessemer Venture Partners also participated alongside existing backers Khosla Ventures and Peak XV Partners. Sarvam hopes to raise a total of $300 million for its Series B round. 其中 1.5 亿美元资金来自印度企业集团 HCL 集团旗下的 IT 子公司 HCLTech，该公司也是本轮融资的领投战略投资者。Bessemer Venture Partners 以及现有投资者 Khosla Ventures 和 Peak XV Partners 也参与了本轮投资。Sarvam 希望其 B 轮融资总额能达到 3 亿美元。
The investment comes more than two years after Sarvam raised $41 million across its seed and Series A rounds, and follows the startup’s launch of its open source models in 30 billion- and 105 billion-parameters earlier this year. The new funding also reflects a broader push by countries and companies to develop sovereign AI capabilities amid growing concerns over access to advanced models and the computing infrastructure that powers them. 此次投资距离 Sarvam 在种子轮和 A 轮融资中筹集 4100 万美元已过去两年多。此前，该公司于今年早些时候发布了 300 亿和 1050 亿参数的开源模型。这笔新资金也反映出，在人们对获取先进模型及其背后的计算基础设施日益担忧的背景下，各国和各企业正更广泛地推动发展“主权 AI”能力。
Sarvam is among a handful of startups attempting to build a full-stack AI business, spanning model development, inference infrastructure, and enterprise applications. The startup says its models are designed for Indian languages and use cases, while its products are being deployed across sectors including banking, insurance, government services, and defense. Sarvam 是少数几家试图构建全栈 AI 业务的初创公司之一，业务涵盖模型开发、推理基础设施和企业应用。该公司表示，其模型专为印度语言和应用场景设计，产品目前已部署在银行、保险、政府服务和国防等多个领域。
HCLTech’s investment gives Sarvam a deep-pocketed strategic partner as it seeks to commercialize its technology. The plan is to combine Sarvam’s AI models with HCLTech’s enterprise relationships, engineering workforce, and software assets to build AI products for businesses and governments. HCLTech 的投资为 Sarvam 提供了一位财力雄厚的战略合作伙伴，助力其技术商业化。双方计划将 Sarvam 的 AI 模型与 HCLTech 的企业客户关系、工程团队及软件资产相结合，为企业和政府打造 AI 产品。
Sarvam’s investment comes as India cements its position as one of the world’s most important AI markets. Both OpenAI and Anthropic have described India as their second-largest market after the U.S., driven by the country’s vast base of developers, enterprises, and consumers adopting AI tools. Sarvam 的这笔融资正值印度巩固其全球最重要 AI 市场地位之际。OpenAI 和 Anthropic 均将印度描述为仅次于美国的第二大市场，这主要得益于该国庞大的开发者、企业和消费者群体对 AI 工具的广泛采用。
Despite its scale as an AI consumer, India has produced few serious contenders in the race to develop frontier AI models. High computing costs and limited access to capital have made it difficult for Indian startups to compete with well-funded rivals in the U.S. and China, leaving Sarvam among a small group of companies attempting to build homegrown foundation models. 尽管印度作为 AI 消费市场的规模巨大，但在开发前沿 AI 模型的竞赛中，印度鲜有强有力的竞争者。高昂的计算成本和有限的资本获取渠道，使得印度初创公司难以与美国和中国资金雄厚的竞争对手抗衡，这使得 Sarvam 成为少数几家试图构建本土基础模型的公司之一。
The debate over AI sovereignty gained fresh urgency last week when Anthropic disabled access to its latest models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, after the U.S. government ordered the company to suspend their use by any foreign national, citing national security concerns. The move highlighted how access to cutting-edge AI systems remains concentrated among a small number of overseas providers. 上周，关于 AI 主权的讨论变得愈发紧迫。由于美国政府以国家安全为由，要求 Anthropic 禁止任何外国公民使用其最新模型 Fable 5 和 Mythos 5，Anthropic 随后关闭了相关访问权限。此举凸显了尖端 AI 系统的访问权依然集中在少数几家海外供应商手中。
With the fresh investment, Sarvam said it would fund research into its next-generation AI models focused on agentic, coding, and cybersecurity applications, while also expanding access to computing infrastructure as it scales deployments across industries. Sarvam 表示，将利用这笔新资金投入下一代 AI 模型的研发，重点关注智能体（Agentic）、编程和网络安全应用，同时随着在各行业部署规模的扩大，进一步扩展对计算基础设施的访问能力。
Sarvam said its conversational AI platform now handles more than 2 million interactions a day, while its inference platform processes roughly 10 million API calls daily. Its speech models transcribe more than 500,000 hours of audio each month, and its document AI systems are being used to digitize more than 35 million pages of records. Sarvam 表示，其对话式 AI 平台目前每天处理超过 200 万次交互，推理平台每天处理约 1000 万次 API 调用。其语音模型每月转录超过 50 万小时的音频，其文档 AI 系统正被用于数字化超过 3500 万页的记录。
Those tools are increasingly being deployed at scale. The company said its multilingual voice agents have collected data from 17 million farmers for India’s Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare. Additionally, a nationwide voice campaign for a leading insurer helped support policy renewals for 45 million policyholders. 这些工具正越来越多地被大规模部署。该公司称，其多语言语音智能体已为印度农业和农民福利部收集了 1700 万农民的数据。此外，为一家领先保险公司开展的全国性语音活动，帮助 4500 万保单持有人完成了保单续约。
Beyond government and consumer-facing applications, Sarvam said a large fintech company is using its agentic AI platform to support a sales force of more than 350,000 people. The startup was founded by Vivek Raghavan and Pratyush Kumar, who previously worked at AI4Bharat, an Indian-language AI research initiative at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras backed by technology veteran Nandan Nilekani. 除了政府和面向消费者的应用外，Sarvam 还表示，一家大型金融科技公司正在使用其智能体 AI 平台来支持超过 35 万人的销售团队。该初创公司由 Vivek Raghavan 和 Pratyush Kumar 创立，他们此前曾在 AI4Bharat 工作。AI4Bharat 是印度马德拉斯理工学院的一个印度语言 AI 研究项目，由资深技术专家 Nandan Nilekani 支持。
“Our ambition is to diffuse this technology widely in India, creating significant value across sectors for citizens, small businesses, enterprises, and state and central governments,” Raghavan said. “We are positioned to both help them adopt and innovate on AI.” “我们的目标是在印度广泛普及这项技术，为公民、小企业、大型企业以及邦和中央政府在各个领域创造巨大价值，”Raghavan 说道，“我们有能力帮助他们采用 AI 并进行创新。”