Accel Closes Ninth India Fund With $550 Mn Corpus To Invest In AI, Deeptech

Accel, a venture capital firm, has just closed its ninth India fund, raising $550 million for investments in AI, deeptech, and other emerging sectors. This new India fund is part of a larger $3.5 billion capital raise across four new funds, as Accel seeks to boost its exposure to AI and early-stage startups. The latest India fund arrives around 18 months after Accel's previous India vehicle, which it closed in January 2025.

In the previous fund, Accel raised $650 million from 131 investors, bringing its total commitments to India to over $3 billion.

Harry Nelis, an Accel partner, stated that the fresh capital will enable the firm to support Indian startups at a time when AI is transforming venture investment. With founders raising larger rounds at earlier stages, and investors competing for stakes in promising AI companies, Accel aims to capitalize on this emerging trend. The firm has been investing in India for over two decades, backing some of the country's most prominent tech startups such as Flipkart, Swiggy, Freshworks, Myntra, Acko, BlackBuck, BookMyShow, Urban Company, Moglix, and Moneyview.

Most of these startups have either gone public or are on the path to an IPO, highlighting Accel's reliance on IPO liquidity.

Accel has been an early institutional investor in both Flipkart and Swiggy, investing $800,000 in Flipkart in 2008 and continuing to support the ecommerce company until its acquisition by Walmart in 2018. The firm also invested $1 million in Swiggy in 2015. Accel has historically been the first institutional cheque investor in over 85% of its India and Southeast Asia investments, with 95% of those investments occurring at the seed or Series A stage.

The company has used its Atoms pre-seed program to identify startups in AI and other emerging sectors, and in 2026, Accel partnered with Prosus to launch Atoms X, a program focused on investing in emerging Indian deeptech startups.