HCLTech has made one of the biggest AI investments ever by an Indian IT services company, agreeing to invest ₹1,427 crore (around $150.7 million) in Bengaluru-based Sarvam AI. The deal will give HCLTech a 10.5% stake in the startup and values Sarvam at about $1.5 billion (about ₹13,000 crore), making it one of India’s most valuable AI companies. The investment is part of Sarvam’s Series B funding round, which has already raised $234 million (around ₹2,000 crore) in its first close and is targeting a total of $300 million.
The funding round has attracted several major investors. Along with HCLTech, Bessemer Venture Partners joined the round, while existing investors including Khosla Ventures and Peak XV Partners continued their support. Sarvam had previously raised about $41 million through earlier funding rounds. The company’s valuation has increased several times over within just a few years, showing strong investor confidence in the future of AI and in Sarvam’s position within the Indian market.
For HCLTech, the partnership offers more than a financial return. The company plans to use Sarvam’s technology to develop new AI solutions for its global customer base, particularly in areas like agentic AI, software development, cybersecurity and enterprise automation.
Meanwhile, Sarvam will use the fresh capital to expand its computing infrastructure, train larger AI models, hire more researchers and accelerate product deployment. HCLTech, which employs more than 227,000 people and operates in about 60 countries, brings a large customer network that could help Sarvam scale much faster than most startups. Sarvam AI was founded in 2023 by Vivek Raghavan and Pratyush Kumar. Unlike many startups that build applications on top of existing AI models, Sarvam is developing technology across the entire AI stack. Its work includes foundation models, speech AI, multilingual language models, enterprise AI systems, document intelligence tools and AI infrastructure.
Earlier in 2026, the company launched open-source AI models with 30 billion and 105 billion parameters, aiming to create powerful AI systems optimized for India’s languages and business needs. The startup has already achieved significant scale in a short period. According to company data, Sarvam’s conversational AI platform handles more than 2 million interactions every day, while its inference platform processes around 10 million API calls daily. It is also important to note that the deal highlights how India’s IT giants are adapting to the AI era. While companies like HCLTech, TCS, Infosys and Wipro have traditionally relied on software services and outsourcing, the rise of generative AI is reshaping the industry.
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Ashutosh is a Senior Writer at The Tech Portal, largely reporting on new tech, and intersection of technology and business. Ashutosh’s career spans across nearly a decade of technology writing across multiple platforms and languages.
