Lightspeed targets $250M for new India fund, focusing on early-stage AI

Lightspeed is sharpening its India strategy around AI, targeting $250 million for a new early-stage fund as the venture firm bets the technology will drive the next wave of startups in one of the world’s largest markets.

The Silicon Valley venture firm is already a major investor in AI companies including Anthropic , xAI , and Databricks . In India, it has backed Sarvam AI , one of the country’s leading large language model developers and a startup selected by the Indian government to help develop sovereign AI models.

The new fund, Lightspeed India Partners V, will be half the size of its $500 million predecessor , which was raised in 2022 and has already committed 80% of its capital to startups, according to a letter sent to investors on Thursday and seen by TechCrunch.