Bengaluru: Venture capital firm Activate, founded by Aakrit Vaish and Pratyush Choudhury, has closed a $105 million early-stage fund to back artificial intelligence startups.Vaish was previously an adviser to the central government’s IndiaAI Mission. Choudhury was formerly an investor at early-stage fund Together.Of the $105 million, Activate has deployed $20 million through growth investment vehicles. Its growth investments include Sarvam AI, ElevenLabs and Wispr Flow.Activate said it has made 10 investments since its first close in Dec 2025. These comprise seven early-stage companies and three growth investments.The firm leads a startup’s first institutional funding round, investing between $500,000 and $3 million. It also works with founders before they formally incorporate their businesses, helping with product development, hiring and subsequent fundraising.“The prevailing narrative is that India is behind in AI; we believe India is simply early,” said Vaish, who previously founded Haptik, which was acquired by Reliance Jio in 2019. “At this stage, the ecosystem needs to come together across talent, global capital, enterprises and policy.”The early-stage fund will focus on three broad areas: domestic AI capabilities, services businesses built around AI, and consumer applications. The first covers models and computing infrastructure, alongside uses in science, manufacturing and defence. Its services strategy targets businesses using AI to change how IT services and other business processes are delivered.On the consumer side, it plans to back products across commerce, financial services, education, healthcare, content and gaming, among other categories.“We don’t believe India’s AI opportunity is about replicating what has been built elsewhere. It is about building from our unique strengths to create a generation of AI companies that can define categories globally,” Choudhury said.Backers named by the firm include General Catalyst, Khosla Ventures founder Vinod Khosla, Paytm founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Groww founders Lalit Keshre and Harsh Jain, Manipal Education and Medical Group founder Ranjan Pai and Freshworks founder Girish Mathrubootham.Activate said its investors include institutions, more than 50 founders and AI researchers, about a dozen partners at global venture capital firms, and more than 50 family offices, enterprises and corporates.
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