Google teams up with Accel to hunt for India’s next AI breakouts

Summary

Google has partnered with Accel to find and fund India’s earliest-stage AI startups in a first-of-its-kind collaboration for the Google AI Futures Fund, launched earlier this year. On Tuesday, Accel and Google announced a partnership to jointly invest up to $2 million in each startup through Accel’s Atoms program, with both firms contributing up to $1 million. The 2026 cohort will focus on founders in India and the Indian diaspora building AI products from day one. “The thought process is building AI products for billions of Indians, as well as supporting AI products built in India for global markets,” Prayank Swaroop, a partner at Accel, told TechCrunch. India is an appealing market with the world’s second-largest internet and smartphone base after China and its deep engineering talent. Still, it’s also country that lacks frontier model development and hasn’t produced many companies pushing the technical frontier of AI, where development remains concentrated in the U.S. and China. Activity is starting to shift, however, as major firms including OpenAI and Anthropic have recently announced offices in the country, and global investors step up early-stage commitments. The bet is that a large, mobile-first population, expanding cloud infrastructure, and relatively low software costs could turn India into a meaningful AI market —if the ecosystem can translate talent and demand into original research and products. Swaroop said investments will be geared toward just about any area: creativity, entertainment, coding, and work. “The future of work here is more encompassing, which is essentially SaaS, and all other applications,” he told TechCrunch. “It could even be foundational models.” Swaroop said the firms will also try to identify areas where large language models are likely to advance over the next 12–24 months and look for Indian startups building in those directions. Techcrunch event San Francisco | October 13-15, 2026 Alongside capital, founders will receive up to ...