American model, television personality and the mastermind behind the clothing line “Guest In Residence,” Jelena Noura Gigi Hadid, left Twitter on November 7th. While quitting the platform, she wrote, “I deactivated my Twitter account today.” Adding on, she said that the new leadership that fosters hate and bigotry is the main reason why she is disinterested in being a part of the platform.
A New Investment Pipeline for Indian AI Founders
In a groundbreaking initiative aimed at accelerating the growth of artificial intelligence (AI) startups in India, Google partnered with global venture capital firm Accel. In fact, this is the first of its kind for the Google AI Futures Fund, which was launched earlier this year to support growing artificial intelligence innovators around the world.
As part of their partnership, Google and Accel have agreed to jointly invest a maximum of two million dollars ($2 million) in each startup accepted into Accel’s Atoms program — one million dollars ($1 million) from Google and up to one million dollars ($1 million) from Accel. In 2026, the focus of the Atoms program will be on founders located in India, as well as those from the Indian diaspora worldwide who are creating AI-natives from concept to deployment.
The objective of the program, according to Prayank Swaroop of Accel, is to facilitate both the development of AI products geared toward India’s one billion-plus consumers and those produced in India that will be used professionally and personally on a global basis. Currently, India ranks as the second-largest market worldwide for both Internet users and smartphone users, and it ranks among the world’s top countries in terms of engineering talent, which provides an excellent foundation for the rapid growth and adoption of AI.
India’s AI Ecosystem Poised for Rapid Growth
India has built a strong developer community and is rapidly adopting AI technology. While the emphasis has been primarily on applied innovation through Technology, there are now many exciting opportunities in the region for those looking to build AI into the future:
1. In 2024, OpenAI opened an office in India
2. Anthropic increased its hiring and research facilities located in India (Bangalore)
3. AI Start-Up Funding in India has grown over sevenfold from 2019 to 2024 (According to Tracxn’s data)
4. According to NASSCOM/McKinsey, the AI industry in India will be adding an estimated $500 billion to the GDP by 2025
Additionally, the interest of Venture Capital Firms has significantly increased, with many leading firms such as Lightspeed, Sequoia, Peak XV, and Softbank now actively providing funding within India’s AI space.
What Selected Startups Will Receive
The selected founders will receive a broad range of resources that extend beyond just funding; as part of their selection for the programme the founders will receive:
- Up to $350,000 in compute credits on Google Cloud Platform/Gemini/DeepMind.
- Access to Gemini & DeepMind API’s, models, and early-stage experimentation capabilities.
- Mentoring from Google technical leads, and Accel partners.
- An in-person experience in London, San Francisco Bay Area, and Google I/O.
- Continued support from researchers at Google Labs and DeepMind.
- Pathways and assist in co-developing and commercialising products.
- Access to Accel’s Atoms Network of founders.
- Amplification of product visibility and marketing on a global scale via Google and Accel channels.
Jonathan Silber, Director of Google AI Futures Fund said, “India was selected as the first global hub for the program due to its growing digital leadership and unique founder ecosystem.”
Google’s AI Expansion in India
Recent partnerships between Google and India demonstrate Google’s ongoing commitment to building on the groundwork it has established over the years. Other notable signs of this growth include:
- $15 billion USD investment to create a data centre and AI hub with capacity to support the development of 1 gigawatt of renewable energy
- The US $10 billion Digitization Fund to invest in key roles identified as suitable for digitization (i.e., retail, bank, delivery, cloud service, etc.) that are already invested in Indian companies such as Airtel, Jio, and Flipkart.
- Partnering with Reliance Jio to provide free access to millions of customers via its AI Pro offering.
- Investment directly in Toonsutra, an Indian animation platform along with STAN, an Indian startup using AI technology.
According to Google, they plan to invest capital into start-up companies which have been accepted by the accelerator, Sonic, but Google will not demand that Sonic, Gemini, or Google’s technologies be used exclusively by companies they back; Google recognizes that some of the companies may select other AI companies (OpenAI, Anthropic) or open-source alternatives.
Accel’s Growing AI Strategy
Accel created their Atoms Program in 2021 to fund 40 or so companies with over $300 million of additional follow-on investment. Accel now accepts applications for Indian people living outside of India and has partnered with Prosus on Atoms X, a program that will focus on supporting large domestic innovations.
The partnership is framed not as a means of acquiring companies or generating revenue from cloud services rather, it is about catalysing a new wave of internationally viable artificial intelligence innovation originating out of India.
Positioning India for AI Leadership
India has recently been recognized as having the potential to become one of the world’s leading artificial intelligences (AI) superpowers due to the country’s:
- The largest global supply of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) graduates;
- The rapid increase in usage of digital public infrastructure (e.g. UPI, Aadhaar, ONDC);
- The fact that India has a young and very active mobile-first population;
- The lowest AI deployment costs in all major economies;
- The rapid rise of demand for intelligent multilingual and vernacular solutions.
By 2030, many economists believe that India may be one of the largest three AI markets in the world, with enterprise and deeptech-based AI as primary drivers of growth.
