Peak XV Partners, a leading venture capital firm investing in sectors such as India and Southeast Asia with over $10 billion in managed assets, has raised its investment per startup through Surge, its seed-stage investment platform, while introducing a new cohort of 18 companies.

At least three companies within this cohort had already secured external funding, in some instances from Peak XV itself, prior to joining Surge.

The latest group, dubbed Surge 12, is the first to function under Peak XV’s elevated investment limit of up to $5 million per startup, an increase from the previous $3 million. The venture firm has invested more than $50 million in this batch, which has collectively garnered over $90 million in seed financing, according to Peak XV. The median investment per company has also risen, though the firm did not reveal the specific amount.

“The threshold for raising a Series A has significantly increased,” Rajan Anandan (shown above), managing director at Peak XV, stated in an interview. He noted that the firm is witnessing more capital-intensive businesses, especially in deeptech, raising larger seed rounds.

Anandan informed TechCrunch that Surge has become increasingly global with each cohort, with the current group featuring founders and companies from San Francisco to Sydney. Among the 18 startups in Surge 12, only five target the Indian market, while over half are based in India. The other 13 aim at global markets, emphasizing the distinction between where the companies are created and where they anticipate finding customers.

Since its inception in 2019, while Peak XV was operating as Sequoia Capital India and Southeast Asia, Surge has supported more than 180 startups founded by entrepreneurs from over 18 nationalities. Peak XV reports that the 10 largest firms emerging from those cohorts now generate more than $1 billion in combined annual revenue.

Anandan characterized Surge as Peak XV’s main channel for seed-stage investing, with the firm continuing to invest as companies move through subsequent funding stages. The founders it supports typically consist of repeat entrepreneurs, seasoned operators, and highly specialized technical founders, he noted, with around 50% to 60% of a typical cohort composed of individuals with operational backgrounds at established tech firms.

This cohort’s startups cover AI, robotics, space, consumer products, healthcare, music, and fintech, encompassing everything from AI safety and personal computing to autonomous robots designed for underground pipelines and satellites engineered for detecting radio-frequency signals from orbit.

The Surge 12 cohort

Alma — launched by Nischith Shadagopan M N and Vinod Ganesan — is developing a personal computing platform aimed at making computer usage faster and more cost-effective. Its founders had prior experience at Microsoft Research and were founding engineers at Sarvam AI, a startup in Bengaluru focused on AI models for Indian languages.

August AI — established by Anuruddh Mishra, an IIT-BHU graduate who began the company in 2022 following a personal medical misdiagnosis — offers a healthcare platform that integrates AI with physician-led services, reaching over 9 million users across 160 nations.

Ditto — co-founded by UC Berkeley dropouts Allen Wang and Eric Liu — serves as an AI-driven dating matchmaker within iMessage, designed to assist college students in transforming digital introductions into face-to-face interactions. (TechCrunch reported more on this last month.) The business had previously raised $9.2 million in a Peak XV-led seed funding round disclosed earlier this year.

GameStock — founded by Antoine Mistico, Easton Dana, and Vivek Indlebele Narasimha Prasad — integrates competition mechanics into financial markets, turning investing and trading into a more competitive experience. Mistico is a two-time founder and a former professional baseball player.

HiLoop — started by Jad Ghalayini, Karan Brar, and Thomas Boser — assists AI firms in adapting general-purpose open-weight models for specific uses through its post-training framework. Its founding team includes former engineers from Reducto and a PhD from Cambridge who completed his doctorate at 24.

Hoola Health — initiated by Deeksha Senguttuva — centers on healthcare for children and their families, providing consultations, vaccinations, medications, diagnostics, developmental therapies, and dental services on a unified platform. Senguttuva hails from a family involved in healthcare, having built and managed a hospital group.

Kello — launched by Mona Gandhi and Subramanya Jingade — is creating an AI-driven talent-discovery platform focused on assessing a candidate’s potential and growth rather than solely on traditional credentials. Gandhi claims she was Airbnb’s first female engineer and previously founded Upraised, while Jingade co-founded AmbitionBox.

Kindling — established by Adam Miller and Sachin Shah — is constructing what it terms a “storytelling operating system” for tech startups, utilizing AI to aid companies in developing and producing their communication and content.

Puralink — founded by Harrison Crowe-Maxwell, Shyeon Delnawaz, and Thien “Long” Tran — is creating autonomous robots capable of navigating underground pipeline systems. Crowe-Maxwell has been building robots since he was young and transformed university research into the patented drive technology supporting the startup.

Reinforce Labs — established by Anish Das Sarma — is designing tools for evaluating, red-teaming, and rectifying enterprise AI systems. Sarma previously founded a company acquired by Airbnb and went on to serve as a director at Google, where he led AI and machine-learning teams.

Riffle — co-founded by Anurag Choudhary and deo — is crafting a web-based platform for musicians to create, collaborate, and share music, minimizing the need to switch between different tools during the creative process.

Rosella — co-founded by Chris Dwyer and Sean Stuart — is establishing an AI-native commercial insurance brokerage for U.S. businesses, using AI to automate segments of the traditionally manual process of sourcing and securing business insurance. Rosella raised about $2.5 million in a pre-seed funding round led by Peak XV and Intact Private Capital earlier this year.

Tribe Money — founded by Himanshu Arora and Nikhil Shanker — offers an AI-driven personal finance platform that assists users in tracking their finances, researching investments, and making investment choices.

ULOOK — created by Adheesh Boratkar and Siddhesh Ravindra Naik — is developing autonomous satellite systems for radio-frequency sensing and spectrum intelligence, targeting global clients. Its founders have participated in over 12 satellite missions. The company had already secured roughly $2.3 million in seed funding from growX Ventures and InfoEdge Ventures prior to joining Surge.

Wingit — founded by Nikunj Kothari and Saksham Khandelwal — is constructing a beauty platform aimed at India’s burgeoning premium-consumer market. It concentrates on how consumers discover and purchase higher-end beauty products.

Three additional startups in this cohort have not yet publicly disclosed their identities or offerings. Peak XV mentioned they are engaged in education, applied AI, and medical products.