Nvidia Partners With Peak XV, Accel to Fund India's AI Startups

Nvidia Bets Big on India’s AI Startup Ecosystem With Major VC Partnerships

Nvidia has made its boldest move yet in India’s artificial intelligence market. The chipmaker announced partnerships with some of the country’s most influential venture capital firms — Peak XV, Accel India, Elevation Capital, Z47, and Nexus Venture Partners — to identify and fund promising AI startups building solutions for both domestic and global markets.

The announcement, made ahead of India’s AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, signals a turning point in how the world’s most valuable semiconductor company views Indian founders and the long-term commercial potential of the country’s fast-growing developer base.

Why Nvidia Is Targeting Early-Stage Indian AI Startups

Nvidia’s interest in India goes beyond chip sales. The company wants to embed itself into the DNA of Indian AI companies while they are still small, technical, and hungry for computing power. This early-stage push reflects a broader pattern: startups that build on Nvidia hardware at inception rarely switch to competing platforms as they scale.

Through its Inception program, Nvidia already works with more than 4,000 Indian AI startups. But the new VC partnerships add a sharper, more curated layer to this effort. By teaming up with firms like Peak XV and Accel India, Nvidia gains access to deal flow and founder networks that go well beyond what a corporate accelerator can reach on its own.

A key part of this expanded strategy involves Activate, an early-stage venture firm led by Aakrit Vaish that raised a $75 million debut fund. Activate plans to back 25 to 30 AI startups and give portfolio companies preferential access to Nvidia’s engineering expertise. Vaish described the firm’s approach as “inception investing” — meeting technical teams months before they even incorporate a company.

The fund counts prominent names among its backers, including venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, Perplexity co-founder Aravind Srinivas, Peak XV managing director Shailendra Singh, and Paytm CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma. Activate is not the only firm making this bet — NuVentures recently launched a $75 million fund targeting AI startups with an India connection, reflecting a wider wave of dedicated AI venture capital in the region.

Nvidia’s Full-Stack India AI Strategy Goes Beyond Startups

Nvidia’s ambitions in India stretch across the entire AI value chain. Alongside the VC partnerships, the company announced supply agreements with data centre operators Yotta Data Services and AI cloud firm E2E Networks. Both firms will receive Nvidia’s latest Blackwell Ultra GPUs to power sovereign AI infrastructure. Nvidia has outlined its commitment to India’s AI infrastructure and models as part of a broader vision to support the country’s compute capacity.

Yotta is building a facility equipped with more than 20,000 Blackwell chips, backed by planned investments exceeding $2 billion. E2E Networks, whose shares surged 20% following the announcement, is rolling out AI services powered by Blackwell processors in collaboration with Larsen & Toubro’s data centre arm.

Nvidia also partnered with nonprofit AI Grants India, co-founded by Vaibhav Domkundwar and Bhasker Kode, which aims to support more than 10,000 early-stage founders over the next 12 months. This grassroots push, combined with the high-level VC collaborations, gives Nvidia coverage across the full spectrum of India’s startup landscape.

India’s $200 Billion AI Infrastructure Opportunity

India’s appeal as an AI market is grounded in hard numbers. The government has approved $18 billion for semiconductor projects aimed at building a domestic chip supply chain. Analysts expect up to $200 billion in data centre investments to flow into the country over the next several years.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s IndiaAI mission is driving policy support for AI research, compute access, and startup development. This public-sector commitment, combined with India’s deep pool of software engineering talent, creates an environment where Nvidia’s early bets could pay off substantially.

Although India currently represents a small fraction of Nvidia’s overall revenue, the trajectory points upward. Large enterprises, government contracts, and a generation of AI-native startups are expected to drive sustained demand for high-performance computing infrastructure.

Competition Heats Up as AMD and Global Tech Giants Eye India

Nvidia is not operating in a vacuum. Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) announced this week that it will bring its Helios data centre blueprint to India and partner with Tata Consultancy Services to support up to 200 megawatts of AI infrastructure capacity. Even Qualcomm has committed $150 million to Indian AI startups through a strategic venture fund. OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google all participated in the AI Impact Summit, each positioning themselves to capture a share of India’s expanding AI economy. Notably, OpenAI is partnering with Tata Group to build a 100MW AI data centre in India, further raising the stakes for Nvidia.

For Nvidia, speed matters. The company’s strategy of engaging founders at the earliest possible stage — before competitors even know these startups exist — could prove decisive. Vaish noted that Nvidia’s engagement with Indian startups has historically been lighter compared to the U.S., but that gap is closing fast.

In November 2025, Nvidia joined the India Deep Tech Alliance alongside Accel, Blume Ventures, Premji Invest, and Celesta Capital. That consortium provides strategic and technical guidance to emerging startups, adding another layer to Nvidia’s increasingly dense network of Indian partnerships.

What This Means for Indian AI Founders

For Indian founders building in artificial intelligence, Nvidia’s expanded presence represents a tangible shift. Access to cutting-edge GPUs, direct engineering support from Nvidia’s teams, and introductions to top-tier investors through programs like Activate and the Inception program lower the barriers that have historically made it harder for Indian startups to compete globally. Several of the top AI startups to watch in India are already benefiting from this kind of ecosystem support.

The message from Nvidia is clear: India’s AI startup ecosystem is no longer a secondary market. It is a strategic priority.

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Author

Sachin

Sachin Sidharth is a Digital Marketing professional with a master’s degree in Digital Marketing from Coventry University, UK. He has 10+ years of blogging and online marketing experience. He currently heads Digital Acquisition for a leading London-based Fintech firm. At KnowStartup.com He focuses on writing Digital Marketing guides and manages...