Bhavish Aggarwal's Krutrim raises $50M, turns unicorn just 40 days after launch

Ola Founder Bhavish Aggarwal's (large language model) LLM startup Krutrim SI Designs has raised $50 million in equity round from Matrix Partners and others at a valuation of $1 billion.

"This landmark achievement marks a significant milestone not only for the company but also for the Indian tech ecosystem, as Krutrim becomes India’s fastest unicorn," the company said in a statement.

Krutrim is building an AI computing stack and a family of LLMs purpose-built to serve the unique requirements of the Indian tech ecosystem. In December, the company unveiled an LLM that it said had the most extensive representation of Indian data in its training.

Fuelling generative AI applications for various Indian languages, the model will also power Krutrim's conversational AI assistant to be proficient in multiple Indian languages.

"India has to build its own AI, and at Krutrim, we are fully committed to building the country’s first complete AI computing stack," Bhavish Aggarwal, Founder of Krutrim, said.

The company also announced Krutrim Pro, which will be a multimodal LLM with enhanced capabilities to fluently navigate languages and diverse topics. The model, trained on 2 trillion tokens, aims for a February 2024 beta release. It aims to serve various purposes, including education and business communications, as the company also plans to build AI infrastructure with indigenous data centres and advanced computing solutions.

Last year, in October, Krutrim had passed a special resolution to issue 38,901 Series A and 19,67,61,099 Series B debenture at a face value of Rs 10 each to raise Rs 197 crore, or $24 million, approximately.