TechCrunch Startup News Google teams up with Accel to hunt for India’s next AI breakouts
Nov 26, 2025
Google and Accel are teaming up to invest up to $2 million in Indian AI startups, eyeing the country's rich engineering talent and mobile-first market. They emphasize creative sectors like entertainment and coding while addressing gaps in model development compared to global players like OpenAI. The collaboration aims to nurture innovation through mentorship and resources, with a focus on long-term impact rather than sales. This partnership underscores the strategic importance of empowering Indian founders in the global AI landscape.
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Joint $2M Push For Indian AI Startups
- Google and Accel will jointly invest up to $2M per startup via Accel's Atoms program to back early-stage Indian AI founders.
- The focus is on founders building AI-first products for India and global markets to catalyze original research and products.
India: Demand And Talent, Not Frontier Models
- India offers a huge mobile-first user base, growing cloud infrastructure, and deep engineering talent that make it attractive for AI product scale.
- The current gap is frontier model development, so the bet is translating talent and demand into original research and products.
Leverage Compute Credits And Early Access
- Founders accepted will get up to $350K in Google Cloud, Gemini, and DeepMind compute credits and early access to models and APIs.
- Use these resources plus co-development and mentorship to accelerate product and model integration.