Google teams up with Accel to hunt for India’s next AI breakouts (techcrunch.com)

Google and venture firm Accel have launched a first-of-its-kind collaboration under Google’s AI Futures Fund to find and fund India’s earliest-stage AI startups. Through Accel’s Atoms program the two firms will jointly invest up to $2 million per startup (each putting in up to $1 million) for the 2026 cohort focused on India and the Indian diaspora. Beyond capital, founders get up to $350,000 in compute credits across Google Cloud, Gemini, and DeepMind, early access to Gemini/DeepMind models and APIs, mentorship from Accel and Google technical leads, co-development with Google Labs/DeepMind researchers, and immersion sessions in London and the Bay Area. The move is strategically significant: it aims to accelerate India’s transition from a services-and-product market to an originator of AI research and frontier products by leveraging a massive mobile-first user base, deep engineering talent, expanding cloud infra, and lower software costs. Technical bets span creativity, coding, SaaS/“future of work,” and even foundational models, with Google explicitly not requiring exclusivity of model use. Google will take board-level stakes in funded startups and treat India as a priority market (aligned with its recent $15B data-center/AI hub plan), signaling a concerted effort to seed locally-built AI products that can scale regionally and globally.