Sarvam AI Launches Chanakya to Build AI for ‘National Consequence’

Bengaluru-based AI startup Sarvam AI has announced a new vertical called Chanakya, aimed at developing AI systems for enterprises and strategic use cases, according to posts on X shared by the company on March 29.

Sarvam said the initiative focuses on deploying AI in environments where systems operate without internet access and where reliability is critical. 

“We’ve been quietly building something over the past year, applying our full-stack AI to problems of national consequence and complex enterprises. Now we're scaling the vertical behind it—Chanakya,” the company said.

Sarvam AI indicated that the Chanakya team will work on on-premise deployments in air-gapped setups, along with multi-modal data ingestion and agent-based workflows designed for production environments. 

“Think skunkworks, not services. On-prem deployments in air-gapped environments. Multi-modal data ingestion. Production-grade agentic workflows for institutions where failure isn’t an option,” the company added.

The systems under development are expected to serve both enterprise and strategic sectors. “The systems this team builds will have dual use—enterprise and strategic sector,” the company said.

Sarvam AI is also expanding hiring across engineering, product, data science, and delivery roles. It said it is looking for candidates with experience in deploying large language models on-premise, building for high-stakes environments, and configuring agentic workflows in production.

The company is reportedly in advanced discussions to raise between $200 million and $250 million in a new funding round. Sarvam is said to be targeting a valuation of around $1.5 billion.

The round is expected to include participation from NVIDIA, venture capital firm Accel and IT services major HCLTech, reflecting growing strategic interest in India’s AI ecosystem.