Ola’s AI arm Krutrim intends to raise $300 million

Bhavish Aggarwal, the creator of Ola, is allegedly in talks to raise $300 million in a new fundraising round for his AI company, Krutrim SI Design. The Bengaluru-based business would receive its first capital since joining the unicorn club in January last year.

Krutrim had sought to raise $500 million but scaled down the amount due to little investor interest, according to Mint, which was the first to disclose the event. According to the newspaper, the bankers overseeing the funding round are Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and SBI Capital Markets.

In January 2024, Krutrim reached the unicorn club and raised about $75 million. Among its investors are the Sarin Family, Z47 (previously Matrix), and others. Aggarwal committed his Ola Electric shares in December of last year in order to help Krutrim obtain debt capital through the issue of debentures.

Also Read: Ola’s Bhavish Aggarwal will launch an AI lab and invest INR 2K Cr in Krutrim

Aggarwal declared earlier this year that Krutrim AI Labs would be established to create artificial intelligence, especially for India. He pledged an initial investment of Rs 2,000 crore as part of the project, with hopes to increase it to Rs 10,000 crore by the following year.

With intentions to compete with international firms like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, Krutrim AI Labs is constructing a comprehensive AI ecosystem for India. The business is creating a number of AI models, such as the next-generation language model Krutrim-2, the image- and text-based Chitrarth 1, the speech-based Dhwani 1, and the Indian language-focused Vyakhyarth 1.

In order to strengthen the nation’s cloud and AI infrastructure, Krutrim is also constructing India’s largest AI supercomputer using NVIDIA’s GB200 chips.

Also Read: Krutrim AI Assistant Debuts in Ola Electric Scooters with MoveOS5: A Game-Changer in EV Technology