Bhavish Aggarwal's AI startup Krutrim becomes India's fastest unicorn after raising $50 million

Krutrim, Ola's answer to OpenAI-developed ChatGPT, has become the first unicorn of 2024 in India, achieving the status with $50 million in funding at a valuation of $1 billion.

Aggarwal said, "At Krutrim, we are committed to building India'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."

Matrix Partners India led the round

The funding round was led by Matrix Partners India, an early backer of Aggarwal's ventures, including Ola Cabs and Ola Electric. 

Avnish Bajaj of Matrix Partners India praised Aggarwal's tech innovation track record and expressed privilege in deepening their partnership with Krutrim.

"Bhavish (Aggarwal) 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" Bajaj said.

Building AI computing stack

Krutrim aims to build the entire AI computing stack, focusing on multilingual large language models (LLM). The startup plans to use the funds for global expansion, innovation, and reshaping the AI landscape.

Krutrim said its AI models, which are trained on 2 trillion tokens of data, can understand 22 Indian languages and generate text in 10, claiming superior performance over many open-source LLMs.

Advanced AI models 

Krutrim's AI models include the base model and the more advanced Krutrim Pro, which will be launched in Q4 FY 2024, as per the company's statement.

Krutrim Pro will be multimodal and capable of processing text, audio, image, and video. Notably, It also plans to develop its own silicon, design chips, and create indigenous data centres, with a prototype scheduled for mid-2024 and a production roadmap by the end of 2025.

Operating independently

Krutrim will operate independently within the Ola Group, with plans to integrate its technology across Ola's companies by March 2024.

The AI models will also be available as an API for enterprises and developers, with a focus on an "India-first cost structure". Additionally, Krutrim is developing a conversational AI assistant, similar to OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Bard, to be available in beta for consumers in February 2024.

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