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 a 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.
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Alongside capital, founders will receive up to $350,000 in compute credits across Google Cloud, Gemini, and DeepMind, as well as early access to Gemini and DeepMind models, APIs, and experimental features. The program will include support from Google Labs and DeepMind research teams, co-development opportunities, monthly mentorship with Accel partners and Google technical leads, and immersion sessions in L …