Krutrim, Bhavish Aggarwal’s AI Startup, Launches Chatbot to Challenge ChatGPT and Gemini

Krutrim, an Artificial Intelligence startup founded by Ola’s Bhavish Aggarwal, has introduced an AI chatbot in public beta, directly competing with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. This move follows Krutrim’s recent disclosure of a $50 million financing at a $1 billion valuation, making it the country’s first unicorn of 2024. The funding round was led by Matrix Partners India, solidifying Krutrim’s position as the first AI unicorn in India. The chatbot, sharing the same name as the company, leverages its multilingual large language models (LLM), known as Krutrim. “This is a start for us and our first generation product. Lots more to come and this will also improve significantly as we build on this base,” stated Aggarwal regarding the launch.

Krutrim unveiled its AI models in December, alongside the announcement of the AI chatbot. These models boast an understanding of over 20 Indian languages and can generate text in 10 Indian languages, including Bengali, Tamil, Malayalam, Gujarati, and Marathi. Krutrim Pro, a more advanced version, is set to launch in Q4 FY24, offering enhanced problem-solving and task execution capabilities. Aggarwal emphasized the significance of Krutrim, stating, “Krutrim marks the dawn of a new era in the AI computing stack for our nation. We will aim to innovate alongside the world and define future paradigms.”

Krutrim’s ambitions extend to offering two sizes of its AI models: a base model trained on 2 trillion tokens and unique datasets, and a larger, more complex model named Krutrim Pro. The latter, scheduled for launch in the next quarter, will be multimodal, capable of understanding and working with various formats such as text, audio, image, and video simultaneously.

Aggarwal outlined the company’s broader vision, stating, “We are working on building AI infrastructure — developing indigenous data centres — and aim to eventually get into server-computing, edge-computing, and super-computers.” Additionally, Krutrim is actively involved in the development of AI-optimized silicon chips.