Peak XV’s Surge Unveils 12th Cohort With 18 Startups

Peak XV Partners’ early-stage investment platform Surge has announced its 12th cohort, comprising 18 startups working across artificial intelligence, robotics, space technology, healthcare, fintech, consumer technology and music.

15 startups in the cohort have been publicly named, while 3 remain in stealth, with Peak XV identifying their areas as education, applied AI and medical products. The latest batch is also the first Surge cohort under Peak XV’s revised investment structure, which raises the maximum investment available to an individual startup from $3 million to $5 million.

The publicly named companies are Alma, August AI, Ditto, GameStock, HiLoop, Hoola Health, Kello, Kindling, Puralink, Reinforce Labs, Riffle, Rosella, Tribe Money, ULOOK and Wingit.

Peak XV managing director Rajan Anandan said about half of the companies are AI-native, with businesses using AI as a core part of their products or infrastructure. The cohort also reflects a broader move toward technology applications outside conventional software, including physical infrastructure, healthcare and consumer businesses.

Among the AI-focused companies, Alma, founded by Nischith Shadagopan M N and Vinod Ganesan, is building a personal-computing platform aimed at making computer use faster and more affordable. Both founders previously worked at Microsoft Research and were founding engineers at Sarvam AI.

August AI, founded by Anuruddh Mishra, combines AI with physician-led healthcare, while Ditto, founded by Allen Wang and Eric Liu, is developing an AI matchmaking product within iMessage. GameStock, founded by Antoine Mistico, Easton Dana and Vivek Indlebele Narasimha Prasad, is building a competitive layer around financial markets.

HiLoop, founded by Jad Ghalayini, Karan Brar and Thomas Boser, is developing a post-training platform that helps companies adapt open-weight AI models for specific applications. Kello, founded by Mona Gandhi and Subramanya Jingade, is building an AI-powered talent discovery platform focused on assessing candidates’ potential and development trajectory rather than relying primarily on conventional qualifications.

Kindling, founded by Adam Miller and Sachin Shah, is developing what it describes as a storytelling operating system for technology startups, using AI to help businesses create and distribute content.

In AI infrastructure and enterprise applications, Reinforce Labs, founded by Anish Das Sarma, is developing tools to evaluate, red-team and remediate enterprise AI systems. Sarma previously founded a company that was acquired by Airbnb and later served as a director at Google, where he led AI and machine-learning teams.

Rosella, founded by Chris Dwyer and Sean Stuart, is building an AI-native commercial insurance brokerage for US businesses. The company had previously raised about $2.5 million in a funding round led by Peak XV and Intact Private Capital. Tribe Money, founded by Himanshu Arora and Nikhil Shanker, is developing an AI-powered personal finance platform for tracking money, researching investments and making investment decisions.

The cohort also includes companies working on physical-world applications. Puralink, founded by Harrison Crowe-Maxwell, Shyeon Delnawaz and Thien “Long” Tran, is developing autonomous robots capable of navigating underground pipe networks.

ULOOK, founded by Adheesh Boratkar and Siddhesh Ravindra Naik, is building autonomous satellite systems for radio-frequency sensing and spectrum intelligence. Its founders have worked on more than 12 satellite missions, and the company had previously raised about $2.3 million from growX Ventures and InfoEdge Ventures.

In healthcare, Hoola Health is building an integrated paediatric-care platform covering consultations, vaccinations, diagnostics, developmental therapies and other services. The Bengaluru-based company was founded by Deeksha Senguttuvan in 2024 and was previously known as BabyMD.

In June 2026, Hoola Health raised $5 million in a round led by Peak XV’s Surge, with participation from existing investor W Health Ventures and angel investors. At the time, the company said it had five clinics in Bengaluru and had served more than 20,000 families. It planned to expand to 35 centres across Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Delhi-NCR over the following two years.

Riffle, founded by Anurag Choudhary and deo, is developing a browser-based platform for musicians to create, collaborate on and share music. Wingit, founded by Nikunj Kothari and Saksham Khandelwal, is building a beauty platform focused on India’s premium-consumer segment.

Several founders in the cohort have backgrounds at established technology companies and research organisations. Kello co-founder Mona Gandhi was Airbnb’s first female engineer and later founded Upraised. Reinforce Labs founder Anish Das Sarma previously held a director-level position at Google. Alma’s founders previously worked at Microsoft Research and were founding engineers at Sarvam AI.

The new cohort has also been announced with a larger capital commitment from Surge. Peak XV has raised its maximum investment per Surge company to $5 million from $3 million. Across the 18 companies, Peak XV has invested more than $50 million, while the cohort companies have collectively raised more than $90 million in seed funding.

The geographic profile of the cohort has also become more global. According to Peak XV, five of the 18 startups are focused on the Indian market, while the remaining 13 are targeting global markets. More than half of the companies, however, are based in India.

Surge was launched in 2019, when Peak XV operated as Sequoia Capital India and Southeast Asia. The programme provides seed capital alongside support in areas including hiring, product, engineering, go-to-market, policy, communications and global expansion. Peak XV says Surge has backed more than 180 startups founded by entrepreneurs from over 18 nationalities.

Peak XV’s current Surge platform says its top 10 companies by revenue collectively generate more than $1 billion in annual revenue, while Surge companies have raised more than $3 billion in follow-on funding. The platform currently lists investment amounts ranging from $500,000 to $5 million at the seed stage.

Anandan said the latest cohort reflects two developments Peak XV is seeing at the early stage: AI increasingly being built into the core architecture of products rather than added as a feature, and technology moving beyond digital interfaces into physical infrastructure and established consumer categories. The cohort therefore spans not only AI software and infrastructure but also healthcare delivery, robotics, satellites, financial services, music and beauty.