Peak XV, Lightspeed, Activate Circle Half a Dozen Indian AI Startups

Peak XV Partners, Lightspeed and General Catalyst are in advanced talks to back at least six Indian AI startups, with individual deals ranging from roughly $3 million to $10 million, multiple people aware of the developments told Moneycontrol. Activate, Stellaris Venture Partners and Blume are also lining up investments across AI agents, biotech and enterprise software.

The wave of dealmaking signals a broader shift: Indian venture investors are moving past foundation models and putting money into agents, enterprise deployment and specialised industry use cases.

Who is Rinshul Chandra building his startup for?

Peak XV is in advanced stages of investing $8-10 million in the new AI startup of Rinshul Chandra, former chief operating officer of Zomato, alongside Lightspeed and Blume, sources said. Chandra did not respond to queries, and neither did the three funds.

Chandra is building AI agents focused largely on the merchant side of transactions, while also catering to consumers, according to people familiar with the company's plans. The approach sets it apart from the growing crop of consumer-first AI concierge products.

Platforms such as Instinct, for example, take over tasks on behalf of consumers — finding products or services, making bookings, completing transactions — and interact with merchants behind the scenes. Chandra's startup wants to build the merchant-side agents themselves. These agents would talk to consumer-facing AI assistants and handle requests, transactions and other tasks on behalf of businesses.

Peak XV is also in advanced stages of investing in two other AI startups: Erid Bio and Spark Labs, sources told Moneycontrol.

What are Peak XV's other bets?

Peak XV is in talks to invest around $4-6 million in Spark Labs, together with other investors, the people said. Spark Labs did not respond to queries.

Peak XV, along with General Catalyst, is also in advanced stages of investing around $3 million in Erid Bio. The company uses AI and advanced laboratory technology to design and test new biological molecules, which could eventually be used in drugs and other biotech applications.

"Erid is being valued at around $30 million during ongoing talks with investors," a source told Moneycontrol.

The Erid Bio talks add to a busy stretch for Peak XV in Indian AI. The firm is investing $20 million in Empirical Machines, the startup of an ex-OpenAI researcher, alongside Mettle Capital, a fund started by its former partners, as Moneycontrol exclusively reported earlier this month. More recently, Peak XV and Blume also invested in an AI startup founded by Dunzo founder Kabeer Biswas.

What is General Catalyst and Activate doing?

General Catalyst, beyond its plausible stake in Erid Bio, is in advanced stages of investing around $4 million in Dvar AI, people aware of the developments said. Dvar AI is a deployment partner for Indian enterprises. It fine-tunes open-weight AI models on customer data and hosts them on Indian infrastructure, helping companies tailor AI models to their specific requirements. Peak XV, GC, Dvar and Erid Bio did not respond to queries.

Activate, the $105 million venture fund founded by Aakrit Vaish and Pratyush Choudhury, is in advanced stages of two deals: Blackbird and Pathnovo. Both startups are looking to raise around $4 million each, sources said.

In Blackbird, Activate is expected to invest alongside Stellaris Venture Partners. For Pathnovo — an AI-native SaaS and engineering software company building agentic workflows and automation solutions — Activate is likely to team up with other investors. Activate, Blackbird, Stellaris and Pathnovo did not reply to queries.

How big is the funding momentum?

Moneycontrol was first to report that MStack AI is raising around $30 million and likely preparing to extend the round to $40-50 million. Separately, Simplismart is stitching together a $50 million round.

The context matters. India's AI market remains early-stage compared with mature markets like the US, where companies from Anthropic and OpenAI to Meta and Google collectively raise in a single year what the entire Indian AI startup ecosystem has raised over more than a decade. That gap explains why investors are spreading smaller cheques across application-layer bets rather than chasing frontier models.