Ola's AI start-up Krutrim turns unicorn with latest funding round
Krutrim, an artificial inteligence start-up launched by Ola's founder Bhavish Aggarwal, has raised $50 million at a $1 billion valuation, making it India's first unicorn of 2024. Matrix Partners India, a key supporter of both Ola and Ola Electric in their early stages, spearheaded the funding round alongside other notable investors. This achievement follows Sarvam AI's $41 million seed and Series A funding, emphasizing the increasing interest in AI start-ups.
Funds to drive global expansion and innovation
Krutrim aims to use the funds to expand globally, foster innovation, and accelerate its mission to transform the AI industry. Aggarwal stated that the investment "not only validates the potential of Krutrim's innovative AI solutions but also underscores the confidence investors have in our ability to drive meaningful change out of India for the world." Matrix Partners India's founder and managing director, Avnish Bajaj, commended Aggarwal for consistently introducing cutting-edge technology to India.
Krutrim's multilingual large language models
In December 2023, Krutrim launched its first family of multilingual large language models (LLM), capable of understanding 22 Indian languages and generating text in 10 of them. Krutrim, translating to "artificial" in Sanskrit, is dedicated to the development of complete AI computing infrastructure. Trained by scientists in Bengaluru and San Francisco, Krutrim's AI models are claimed to outperform many open-source LLMs and OpenAI's GPT-4 in Indic language performance. The LLM will be available in Krutrim (base) and Krutrim Pro versions.
Future plans for Krutrim's AI technology
Krutrim intends to launch a conversational AI assistant, akin to OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Bard. It will be capable of seamlessly comprehending and conversing in various Indian languages. The beta version will be available in February, with an API for enterprises and developers. Additionally, Krutrim will create its own silicon chips, develop indigenous data centers, and build super computers. Ola expects to integrate Krutrim across its group companies by March 2024 for sales, service, support, and other processes.
