Azim Premji Investment Firm to Invest Portion of $10 Billion Fund in AI, Says CIO

The Azim Premji-owned private equity fund, Premji Invest, will be investing a portion of the $10 billion it manages for the Wipro head in AI companies, according to reports.

The company has decided to increase investments within the AI sector, according to a report from Bloomberg. Premji Invest’s CIO and managing partner T K Kurien stated that the investments will focus on refining their already existing proprietary investment tools that rely on AI.

This announcement comes only a few weeks after Premji Invest had co-led healthcare-focused LLM Hippocratic AI’s $53 million Series A round. Additionally, it was also reported earlier this month that the company was looking to invest anywhere between $50 to $70 million in Canva.

According to Moneycontrol, the company had also wanted to get ahead on the GenAI boom, which is why it had shifted focus towards more technology-based investments.

Apart from Hippocratic AI, the company has invested in a few AI sector firms in the past, including Cohesity Inc., Pixis, and Ikigai. Additionally, according to Kurien, the company also hopes to allow access of their AI tools to open-source developers.

In terms of AI tools developed by the company, Premji Invest had initially begun development in the field around three years ago, with a total of 14 AI engineers hired so far.

Currently, the company makes use of AI to parse through companies based on several hundred parameters to “identify investment opportunities”.

The latest announcement serves another purpose, with Kurien saying, “The firm expects the entire exercise to also give it a bird’s eye view of emerging technologies and trends that could help it stay ahead of peers.”

The Premji Invest CIO also stated that they were looking into using the tools for potential streamlining of legal processes and improving government services. He stated that this would “help India’s overburdened courts resolve cases faster and to also aid governments’ efforts to offer service more effectively.”