Google has collaborated with Accel to identify and invest India’s earliest-stage AI firms in a first-of-its-kind collaboration for the Google AI Futures invest, which was launched earlier this year.

Accel and Google announced on Tuesday a partnership to invest up to $2 million in each business through Accel’s Atoms program, with each contributing up to $1 million. The 2026 cohort will focus on founders from India and the Indian diaspora who are developing AI technologies from the start.

“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, an Accel partner, told TechCrunch.

India is an intriguing market, with the world’s second-largest internet and smartphone base after China, as well as a wealth of engineering expertise. However, it is a country that lacks frontier model development and has created few businesses pushing the technical frontier of AI, where development is concentrated in the United States and China.

However, activity is beginning to shift as prominent firms such as OpenAI and Anthropic announce new operations in the country and global investors increase their early-stage commitments. The bet is that India’s massive, mobile-first population, rising cloud infrastructure, and inexpensive software costs will propel the country into a significant AI market — if the ecosystem can translate talent and demand into innovative research and solutions.

According to Swaroop, investments will be directed towards a variety of areas, including creativity, entertainment, coding, and work. “The future of work here is more encompassing, which is essentially SaaS, and all other applications,” he explained to TechCrunch. “It could even be foundational models.”

Swaroop stated that the corporations will also aim to identify areas where major language models are likely to grow in the next 12-24 months and search for Indian startups building in such areas.

Along with cash, founders will receive up to $350,000 in compute credits from Google Cloud, Gemini, and DeepMind, as well as early access to Gemini and DeepMind models, APIs, and prototype features. The program will feature Google Labs and DeepMind research team support, co-development possibilities, monthly mentorship with Accel partners and Google technical leads, as well as immersion workshops in London and the Bay Area, including Google I/O. The businesses also stated that founders will receive marketing support through Accel and Google’s global channels, as well as access to the Atoms founder network and Google’s AI builder ecosystem.

“India has an incredible history of innovation, and we firmly believe that its founders are going to be playing a leading role in the next generation of AI-led global technology,” Jonathan Silber, co-founder and director of the Google AI Futures Fund, told TechCrunch. “This is the Futures Fund’s first collaborative effort anywhere in the globe, and we chose India for a reason. Google has been a devoted partner in the country’s digital development, investing billions of dollars over the years.

The collaboration follows Google’s recent $15 billion plan to construct a 1-gigawatt data centre and AI hub in India. The corporation also created a $10 billion digitisation fund in 2020, which has financed companies such as Bharti Airtel, Reliance Jio, and Walmart-owned Flipkart. Google teamed with Reliance last month to provide millions of Jio users with free access to AI Pro.

Google established the AI Futures Fund in May as a specialised mechanism for investing in and collaborating with AI firms worldwide. It has funded Replit and Harvey, as well as made direct investments in Indian businesses like Toonsutra and STAN.

Silber told TechCrunch that Google will appear on the cap tables of businesses funded through the partnership and would be “a material presence,” but declined to specify how its equity interests would compare to Accel’s.

“This is our attempt to work with the market leader in the space who knows the country incredibly well, that can get us talking to earlier-stage founders at an early informative stage, that can move the needle,” Silber went on.

While using Google goods may be expected of candidates to this program, Silber and Swaroop informed TechCrunch that entrepreneurs would not be required to utilise Gemini or any other Google product exclusively.

“Sometimes, Google’s technology is superior. Sometimes you’ll see Anthropic or OpenAI. So we’re not imposing strict constraints that say you can only use Google’s models,” Silber explained. “What we’re hoping to do, though, is find a couple of different unique integrations that we can do with these companies that leverage Google AI technology.”

Atoms, Accel’s pre-seed and seed platform, was launched in 2021 and has since backed more than 40 firms, raising over $300 million in follow-on capital. This year, the firm expanded the initiative to include Indian-origin founders who live abroad.

The latest agreement comes just days after Accel partnered with Prosus to co-invest in Atoms X, which supports early-stage Indian startups developing large-scale solutions with the potential to benefit the country’s population.

Silber told TechCrunch that Google is not constructing the agreement as a path to future acquisitions or cloud clients.

“We are not a sales staff, thus we are not looking to sign up new cloud customers. “That’s not our goal,” he explained. “In terms of KPIs, our objective is simply to see the next wave of innovation in the AI space coming out of India.”