Elevation Capital Launches Fund IX With $500 Mn Corpus To Back AI-Led Startups

Venture capital firm Elevation Capital has launched Fund IX with a target corpus of $500 Mn to invest in Indian startups across consumer tech, consumer brands, fintech and financial services, enterprise AI, frontier tech and healthcare

The launch comes amid rising investor appetite for AI startups. Indian AI startups raised $676 Mn in H1 2026, more than four times the $162 Mn raised a year earlier

Fund IX will primarily back seed and Series A startups and comes less than a year after Elevation Capital launched its $400 Mn fund focused on IPO-bound startups

The new fund will primarily invest in seed and Series A startups building AI-first products amid what the firm described as the ongoing AI platform shift. Elevation Capital said it expects AI to create a new generation of technology startups across sectors.

The VC firm said it will continue investing across its existing sector verticals while increasing its focus on AI-led opportunities. It also described India as one of the world’s largest AI adoption markets, citing the country’s expanding digital economy and widespread adoption of technology across payments, commerce, travel and services.

The launch came less than a year after Elevation Capital launched a $400 Mn late-stage fund, ‘Elevation Holdings’, focused on IPO-bound startups. Together, the two vehicles will allow the firm to back startups from the early stages of their journey through the pre-IPO phase.

Founded in 2001 by Ravi Adusumalli and Mukul Arora, Gurugram-headquartered Elevation Capital, formerly known as SAIF Partners before its 2020 rebrand, invests in early-stage and growth-stage technology startups in India.

Its portfolio includes listed companies such as Urban Company, Aye Finance, Meesho, Paytm, Swiggy, FirstCry and ixigo, besides unlisted startups such as Acko, Spinny, NoBroker, ShareChat and The Souled Store. In total, the firm has made 317 investments, has 159 portfolio companies, and has recorded 27 exits so far.

In recent months, Elevation Capital logged several exits, including through a ₹630 Cr block deal in May in which it offloaded 56.22 Lakh shares of Paytm. Moreover, multiple portfolio companies have listed on the exchanges over the past few months, including Meesho and Aye Finance.

Before Fund IX, Elevation Capital raised funds ranging from $350 Mn to $670 Mn across multiple vintages, before launching Elevation Holdings in 2025 as its dedicated late-stage investment vehicle.

The launch comes at a time when investors are increasingly backing Indian startups building AI-first products. Funding raised by Indian AI startups surged more than fourfold to $676 Mn in H1 2026 from $162 Mn in the year-ago period, underscoring growing investor appetite for the sector.