Ola group's AI firm Krutrim has raised $50 million at a valuation of $1 billion in a funding round led by Matrix Partners, the company said on Friday. 

This makes Krutrim the first artificial intelligence unicorn from India. 

"Krutrim, India's own AI company focused on building the complete AI computing stack, announced the successful closure of its first round of funding. The funding round, led by prominent investors such as Matrix Partners India and others, garnered an investment of $50 million in equity at a valuation of $1 billion," the company said. 

The funds raised will be instrumental in accelerating the company's mission to revolutionise the AI landscape, drive innovation, and expand its reach globally. 

"India has to build its own AI, and at Krutrim, we are fully committed to building the country's first complete AI computing stack. We are thrilled to announce the successful closure of our first funding round, which not only validates the potential of Krutrim 's innovative AI solutions but also underscores the confidence investors have in our ability to drive meaningful change out of India for the world," Krutrim Founder Bhavish Aggarwal said. 

India needs to build it own AI, and we @Krutrim are committing ourselves to building the country's complete AI computing stack. We are excited to announce the successful closure of our first funding round making कृत्रिम - India's fastest Unicorn and also the first AI unicorn 🙂… pic.twitter.com/sORXgTKjki

— Bhavish Aggarwal (@bhash) January 26, 2024

Krutrim unveiled its base Large Language Model (LLM) last month.  With the largest representation of Indian data used for its training, Krutrim claims to power generative AI applications for all Indian languages. 

Trained by a team of leading computer scientists, based in Bangalore and San Francisco, the model will also power Krutrim's conversational AI assistant that claims to understand and speak multiple Indian languages fluently. 

Krutrim is a family of Large Language Models, including Krutrim base and Krutrim Pro which will have multimodal, larger knowledge capabilities, and many other technical advancements for inference. 

Krutrim last month announced that it will run an early access programme until January 2024 with a simple sign-up page on the website. 

Additionally, Krutrim's open APIs (tool to embed it with apps) will be open to all developers by February 2024.