Who Is Vivek Raghavan, The Sarvam AI Co-Founder Named Among TIME's 100 Most Influential Leaders In AI

Vivek Raghavan, co-founder of Sarvam AI, has earned a spot among TIME magazine's 100 most influential leaders in artificial intelligence. Raghavan's expertise lies in creating a homegrown, Indian-language AI stack, avoiding reliance on U.S. tech giants. Before Sarvam AI, he played a significant role in developing Aadhaar authentication while working with Nandan Nilekani.

An IIT Delhi graduate, Raghavan earned a PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 1993. He spent two decades in the electronic design automation (EDA) industry and founded two EDA companies, holding senior management positions at Magma Design Automation, Synopsys, and Avant! Corporation. Raghavan's career pivot came in 2010 when he joined Aadhaar as Chief Biometric Architect, serving in a voluntary capacity.

He contributed to the design, implementation, and scaling of Aadhaar's technology platform from 2013 to 2022, focusing on large-scale biometric systems and AI integration for improved service quality and fraud detection. Raghavan also served as CTO of Team Indus, India's entry into the Google Lunar X-Prize, and was part of the Supreme Court of India's AI committee.

He worked on translating court judgments into Indian languages through the SUVAS system. His interest in language technology led him to the EkStep Foundation and Bhashini, India's Digital India initiative. In August 2023, Raghavan co-founded Sarvam AI with Pratyush Kumar, aiming to develop AI systems for India's linguistic diversity.

Sarvam AI launched OCR and visual-understanding tools like Sarvam Vision, and a multilingual text-to-speech model, Bulbul V3. Nvidia invested $75 million in Sarvam AI's Series B extension, valuing the company at approximately $1.5 billion.