Peak XV Partners has raised the maximum amount it can invest in a startup through its seed-stage platform Surge to $5 million, as it introduced a new group of 18 companies spanning sectors from AI and robotics to healthcare, music, and fintech.
The latest batch, Surge 12, is the first cohort to operate under the higher cap, which was previously $3 million. Peak XV said it invested more than $50 million across the group, whose members have collectively raised over $90 million in seed funding. The firm said its median investment per company also increased, though it did not disclose that figure.
Rajan Anandan, managing director at Peak XV, said the change reflects shifts in the early-stage market. "The bar to raise a Series A has gone up pretty significantly", Rajan Anandan (pictured above), managing director at Peak XV, said in an interview. He added that the firm is also seeing more capital-intensive companies, particularly in deeptech, that are raising larger rounds at the seed stage.
A broader geographic spread
Peak XV, which manages more than $10 billion in assets and invests in markets including India and Southeast Asia, said Surge has grown more international over time. "Surge has become more global with each cohort", Anandan told TechCrunch.
The new cohort includes founders and companies from San Francisco to Sydney. Only five of the 18 startups are focused on the Indian market, while more than half are based in India. The other 13 are targeting global markets, a split that Peak XV said highlights the difference between where companies are built and where they expect to find customers.
Since launching in 2019, when Peak XV was operating as Sequoia Capital India and Southeast Asia, Surge has backed more than 180 startups founded by entrepreneurs from more than 18 nationalities. Peak XV said the 10 largest companies to come out of those cohorts now generate more than $1 billion in combined annual revenue.
Anandan described Surge as Peak XV’s main pathway for seed-stage investing, with the firm continuing to back companies in later rounds. He said founders in the program often include repeat entrepreneurs, experienced operators, and specialized technical founders, with about 50% to 60% of a typical cohort made up of people coming from operating roles at established technology companies.
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Startups in Surge 12
Among the startups named in Surge 12 is Alma, founded by Nischith Shadagopan M N and Vinod Ganesan, which is building a personal computing platform focused on faster and more affordable computer use.
August AI, founded by Anuruddh Mishra, offers a healthcare platform combining AI with physician-led care and says it reaches more than 9 million users across 160 countries.
Ditto, founded by Allen Wang and Eric Liu, is developing an AI dating matchmaker inside iMessage for college students. The company had already raised $9.2 million in a Peak XV-led seed round announced earlier this year.
GameStock, founded by Antoine Mistico, Easton Dana, and Vivek Indlebele Narasimha Prasad, applies competition mechanics to financial markets.
HiLoop, founded by Jad Ghalayini, Karan Brar, and Thomas Boser, helps AI companies adapt general-purpose open-weight models for specific uses through a post-training platform.
Hoola Health, founded by Deeksha Senguttuva, focuses on care for children and families through a platform that includes consultations, vaccinations, medicines, diagnostics, developmental therapy, and dental services.
Kello, founded by Mona Gandhi and Subramanya Jingade, is building an AI-powered talent-discovery platform.
Kindling, founded by Adam Miller and Sachin Shah, is building what it calls a "storytelling operating system" for technology startups.
Puralink, founded by Harrison Crowe-Maxwell, Shyeon Delnawaz, and Thien "Long" Tran, is developing autonomous robots for underground pipe networks.
Reinforce Labs, founded by Anish Das Sarma, is building tools to evaluate, red-team, and remediate enterprise AI systems.
Riffle, founded by Anurag Choudhary and deo, is creating a browser-based platform for musicians to create, collaborate, and share music.
Rosella, founded by Chris Dwyer and Sean Stuart, is building an AI-native commercial insurance brokerage for U.S. businesses. It had previously raised a roughly $2.5 million pre-seed round led by Peak XV and Intact Private Capital.
Tribe Money, founded by Himanshu Arora and Nikhil Shanker, offers an AI-powered personal finance platform for tracking money, researching investments, and making investing decisions.
ULOOK, founded by Adheesh Boratkar and Siddhesh Ravindra Naik, is building autonomous satellite systems for radio-frequency sensing and spectrum intelligence. Before joining Surge, it had already raised roughly $2.3 million in seed funding from growX Ventures and InfoEdge Ventures.
Wingit, founded by Nikunj Kothari and Saksham Khandelwal, is building a beauty platform aimed at India’s premium-consumer market.
Peak XV said three additional startups in the cohort have not yet publicly disclosed their names or products. Those companies are working in education, applied AI, and medical products.
At least three companies in the new cohort had already raised outside funding before joining Surge, in some cases from Peak XV itself.
