Lightspeed targets $250M for new India fund, focusing on early-stage AI
Lightspeed Venture Partners is raising a $250 million fund to focus on early-stage AI startups in India and Southeast Asia. This new vehicle is half the size of its predecessor and aligns the regional fund's fundraising cycle with the firm's global operations. The firm believes AI will drive significant value in India, leveraging the country's strong software development ecosystem.
- ▪Lightspeed is targeting $250 million for its new India fund, which is half the size of the $500 million fund raised in 2022.
- ▪The fund will focus on early-stage AI companies across India and Southeast Asia, with an investment period of roughly two and a half years.
- ▪Lightspeed is moving its India funds onto the same fundraising cycle as its global funds for the first time to better align regional operations.
- ▪The firm has already deployed approximately $900 million through dedicated India and Southeast Asia funds and an additional $1.6 billion from global funds in the region.
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| Publication time | Fri, 25 Sep 2026 05:00:00 +0000 |
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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.
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