How Antler India is fast-tracking the next wave of AI startups

“The companies have branched out into dating, friendship, cooking, storytelling for kids and even sleep,” said Nitin Sharma, India partner and co-head of Antler. Mint.

The program also featured companies working on voice solutions for e-commerce merchants targeting small and medium-sized businesses. Most voice-based generative AI efforts are currently focused on enterprise customers, primarily because that’s where the greater revenue and consistent customers are available.

As India sees a surge in the number of AI startups, early-stage investors like Antler are retooling to bridge one of the biggest hurdles for founders: access to capital. Because high-end models and GPUs remain expensive, specializations like Antler and Accel’s Atom program are filling an important gap by providing early funding to founders, offering compute loans, and offering expertise from their own networks on go-to-market strategies and customer base.

Some of the cohort companies are also working on technology that will disrupt current logistics and aviation systems in the United States. “These are not very attractive things, but they can be great businesses. Their technology may be incremental, but they can increase business productivity,” said Sharma.

Fast and focused

Antler is stepping up its AI bets through this residency model, which runs for four weeks from August 25th to September 25th. The firm said it could write initial checks of $470,000 to founders within the first four to six weeks of the company’s participation in the AI ​​program.

The company divides the investment into two tranches. The first tranche is a $235,000 investment, 9% of which is equity. However, the firm said that the valuations of the startups ranged between $2.5 million and $2.7 million.

Participants also receive $1 million in large language model credits and GPU access from more than 25 vendors, including AI computing tools platform Hugging Face, Nvidia, Anthropic, and OpenAI.

“As long as the founders move very quickly and act in line with our thesis, we will invest,” said Sharma. “We’re not going to ask for data because our belief is that once the data is there, everyone will invest. The data will come eventually.”

For companies that raise more money and scale successfully, the firm is ready to pour up to $30 million into AI portfolio companies and is taking money from its late-stage Antler Elevate Fund, which has a size of $285 million. as well as local Antler funds in different geographies.

AI expertise is also more selective. Usual batches had 80 to 100 people, received over 10,000 applications, and the selection rate was only 1%. There were only 26 teams in the AI ​​branch selected from 2,500 applicants.

Most of the firm’s investments, about 80%, came from regular residency, which lasted between one and three months, depending on how committed the founder was to his idea.

What’s next?

Antler India’s next AI residency will start in January 2026. While rapid execution remains important, Sharma said he wants to support Antler’s founders with strong distribution thinking. “That’s the real moat outside of the core model. For startups on the application side, the moat is data and distribution.”

Consumer technology, education, India-focused services and healthcare in the US are also areas where the firm is looking for companies.

In education technology, founders are developing tools that personalize learning by tracking the movements of players like Arivihan, SpeakX and Seekho, as well as former players now turning to AI, such as IPO-bound PhysicsWallah.

Healthcare has also seen a shift, with many investors shifting from supporting delivery platforms like PharmEasy and TrueMeds to verticalized healthcare offerings like AI-based cancer screening company Qure.ai, dental AI startup Velmeni, and stem cell therapy company Eyestem.

Antler is the latest among global firms to launch an AI-focused accelerator. Global VC firm Accel has its own program called Atoms, which launched in 2021. The artificial intelligence path is currently in its third group. Atoms’ founders go through a three-month program with Accel, investing up to $1 million through equity or convertible notes.

Globally, the AI ​​market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 44.47%, from $300 billion in 2025 to $1.9 trillion by 2030, according to Mordor Intelligence. While North America is expected to remain the revenue leader, the Asia Pacific region is projected to grow the fastest at a compound annual growth rate of 41.4% over the next five years.