Peak XV’s Surge announces 11th cohort, backs 23 companies

Surge—Peak XV’s (formerly Sequoia Capital India and SEA) scale-up programme for early-stage founders—introduced its 11th cohort on Thursday, which includes startups from across India, the Asia-Pacific region, and other global markets.

The new cohort includes 12 artificial intelligence (AI) startups building across enterprise and consumer AI verticals, along with four fintech companies, four consumer brands, and three infrastructure and developer tools companies.

Surge, which has backed companies such as The Health Factory, Metastable Materials, Minimalist, and Ethereal Machines, among others, has invested in over 170 startups across various regions and sectors.

The cohort programme helps founders gain access to Peak XV’s portfolio companies and its network through its founder immersion, which allows cohort founders to interact directly with influential entrepreneurs in the ecosystem.

Some of its previous speakers and mentors include Kunal Shah of CRED, Sanjeev Bikhchandani of Info Edge, and Amrish Rau of Pine Labs.

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The programme will begin in the US, where cohort startups can engage directly with technology leaders, which previously included Sam Altman of OpenAI and Jensen Huang of NVIDIA, among others.

According to Peak XV, Surge companies have raised over $3 billion in follow-on funding, with the top ten startups generating more than $1 billion in cumulative annual revenues.

The Surge team is led by Managing Director Rajan Anandan. In August, former partner Pieter Kemps left the firm, YourStory had reported, following a long list of senior-level exits at one of the largest VC firms in India, which includes Managing Directors Abheek Anand and Shailesh Lakhani.

This announcement comes at a critical time for Peak XV, which is in the midst of raising its first fund post the Sequoia split in 2022.