Venture capital firm Peak XV Partners has selected 18 startups for the 12th cohort of Surge, its seed-stage investing programme. The latest cohort spans artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, space technology, consumer internet, healthcare, financial services and music.
The new cohort comes as Peak XV has revamped Surge and brought the programme closer to its broader early-stage investment practice. Under the revised structure, Surge can invest as much as $5 million in a company, giving the programme greater flexibility in backing startups from their early stages.
The 18 startups include Alma, August AI, Ditto, GameStock, hiloop, Hoola Health, Kello, Kindling, Puralink, Reinforce Labs, Riffle, Rosella, Tribe Money, ULOOK and Wingit. Three additional startups are currently operating in stealth mode and have not been publicly named.
The latest cohort reflects a range of technology-led business models. Several startups are building AI-native products, while others are applying technology to areas such as healthcare, financial services, consumer experiences, music and physical infrastructure.
Alma is working on personal computing for an AI-native environment, while August AI is developing AI-powered clinical intelligence for primary care. Ditto is building an AI dating matchmaker within iMessage, and GameStock is developing a social and competitive layer for financial markets.
In healthcare, Hoola Health is developing a paediatric care platform. Kello is building a people-intelligence engine, while Riffle is developing a browser-based collaborative platform for music creation.
The cohort also includes startups focused on AI infrastructure and enterprise applications. Kindling is building a storytelling platform for technology startups, while Reinforce Labs is focused on AI evaluation, red teaming and remediation for enterprises. Hiloop is developing infrastructure to help companies train, test and improve open-weight AI models at scale.
Other startups are working on applications involving the physical world. Puralink is developing autonomous robots designed to inspect underground pipe infrastructure, while ULOOK is building radio-frequency sensing satellites for spectrum intelligence.
Rosella is building an AI-native commercial insurance brokerage, Tribe Money is developing an AI-based personal finance platform, and Wingit is focused on beauty products and services for premium consumers.
Peak XV said the new cohort reflects three developments in early-stage technology. These include familiar consumer experiences being rebuilt around changing user expectations, AI moving from being a feature to becoming the underlying architecture of products, and technology increasingly being applied to physical infrastructure and real-world challenges.
Rajan Anandan, Managing Director at Peak XV and Surge, said, “What stands out about Surge 12 is that these founders are building from first principles.”
He added, “We are seeing new behaviours emerge around how people create, shop, date, invest and access healthcare, alongside fundamental changes in how companies hire, insure and operate. AI is increasingly becoming the architecture of the product rather than the product itself.”
According to Peak XV, around half of the latest cohort consists of AI-native companies that are either rethinking consumer experiences or building infrastructure to support the secure deployment of AI across enterprises.
The new cohort also includes founders with previous experience at technology companies and startups. For example, Alma’s founders previously worked at Microsoft Research and later became founding engineers at Sarvam AI. Kello co-founder Mona Gandhi was Airbnb’s first female engineer and previously founded Upraised, while Reinforce Labs founder Anish Das Sarma previously built a company that was acquired by Airbnb and later led AI and machine-learning teams at Google.
Surge was launched in 2019 to support early-stage founders with capital and operational assistance. The programme provides support across hiring, product development, engineering, go-to-market strategy, marketing, communications, policy and global expansion, in addition to investment.
Under the current structure, Surge invests between $500,000 and $5 million in seed capital in each company through an equity investment. Peak XV’s Surge programme has backed more than 180 startups across 18 nationalities, while its top 10 portfolio companies collectively generate more than $1 billion in annual revenue.
The 12th cohort marks the latest stage of Surge’s evolution as Peak XV continues to back early-stage companies across sectors, with AI, deep technology and technology-led approaches to real-world problems forming a significant part of the new group.
