The three-month, equity-free programme will target Indian startups in the seed to Series A stages, building AI-led solutions across key emerging areas, including agentic AI for reasoning and automation workflows, multimodal AI covering audio, video, and image generation, physical AI in smart manufacturing and robotics, and sovereign AI for localised models. Selected startups will obtain access to advanced models, mentorship, and cloud infrastructure.

Google India invites AI startups for 2026 startup accelerator programme

Synopsis

The three-month, equity-free programme will target Indian startups in the seed to Series A stages, building AI-led solutions across key emerging areas, including agentic AI for reasoning and automation workflows, multimodal AI covering audio, video, and image generation, physical AI in smart manufacturing and robotics, and sovereign AI for localised models. Selected startups will obtain access to advanced models, mentorship, and cloud infrastructure.

Google India is inviting applications for the 2026 cohort of its Google for Startups Accelerator programme, focussing on artificial intelligence (AI)-first startups from seed to Series A stages.

In a statement, the company said the three-month, equity-free initiative will target Indian companies tackling local challenges or developing specialised models for global use. It prioritises four areas: agentic AI for reasoning and automation workflows, multimodal AI covering audio, video, and image generation, physical AI in smart manufacturing and robotics, and sovereign AI for localised models.

Those who get selected will collaborate with Google experts on advanced models like Gemini, Gemma, Imagen, Veo, and Lyria to overcome technical hurdles. The cohort also receives mentorship from specialists in Google DeepMind, Cloud, and Android, along with access to free Cloud TPUs, Google AI tools, and Cloud credits where eligible. The tech giant will also provide weekly support from success managers to help track product, technology, and growth goals.

The programme starts with a one-week in-person bootcamp in Bengaluru in late June and ends with a Demo Day in October.

The company said its past cohorts have shown strong outcomes, such as data intelligence startup Dview achieving 4x revenue growth, agentic startup Superjoin boosting its accuracy and latency by 50% using Gemini 3.0, and AI-native feedback intelligence platform Pulse spotting $3 million in at-risk revenue.

This accelerator aims to propel India's AI ecosystem amid a shift from pilots to scalable, workflow-native solutions addressing population-scale issues.

The tech giant has been betting on AI talent and startups in India over the past two years. It launched the Google AI Futures Fund in May 2025, whose India-focussed vehicle was started in partnership with Accel in November of the same year.

Jonathan Silber, the fund chief, told ET in an interaction recently that India is a critical market for generative AI (GenAI) and Google, and the tech giant is doubling down on the market and feels that the next unicorn founder in GenAI will come from India.

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