Venture capital firm Elevation Capital is launching its ninth fund worth $500 million to invest in early-stage companies, with a particular focus on artificial intelligence opportunities. According to reports from Mint, the fund will join a growing list of VC firms raising fresh capital over the past year, including Accel's eighth India-focused fund at $650 million and Peak XV Partners' $1.3 billion across multiple funds. The launch comes as the global foundation model market experiences unprecedented growth, with 20 startups having raised at least $1 billion and 87 active foundation model companies currently operating in the market. The foundation model market shows remarkable concentration, with the top 10 startups capturing about 77% of total capital in this ranked dataset, demonstrating extreme funding concentration in AI infrastructure and applications.
Partners Mukul Arora and Mridul Arora expressed confidence in India's AI potential, stating that AI opportunities are only beginning to be unlocked. As reported by Mint, they believe AI is unlocking expertise on top of India's existing connectivity and payments infrastructure, with expertise remaining severely undersupplied. The firm expects India to have a billion internet users, hundreds of listed technology companies, and a new-age ecosystem that will create over a trillion dollars in value. This strategic focus aligns with the broader foundation model market, where 36 startups raised funding since July 2025, indicating strong investor appetite for AI infrastructure companies. The market has evolved beyond general-purpose chat models into coding, biology, video, voice, robotics, world models, and materials discovery, with 16 months of funding activity based on July 2026 data.
Elevation Capital's portfolio includes companies such as Paytm, Swiggy, Urban Company, Spinny, Ixigo and MakeMyTrip. According to Mint, the firm raised $400 million for its pre-IPO fund, Elevation Holdings, in 2025, and with the ninth fund, it will have nearly $900 million to deploy in early- and late-stage opportunities. The firm maintains a disciplined approach, keeping fund size and investor base limited while focusing on financial services, credit, insurance, wealth management and payments sectors. This approach mirrors the foundation model market's concentration, where 36 startups raised funding since July 2025, indicating strong investor appetite for AI infrastructure companies. The market shows diversification across sectors, with generative video and visual-model startups like Runway, Luma AI, PixVerse, and Synthesia raising large rounds, while AI-for-science companies cover drug discovery, protein design, and materials discovery.
As reported by Mint, over the past two years, Elevation Capital has partially exited investments in Paytm, Ixigo and Meesho. The firm expects at least four or five portfolio companies to pursue initial public offerings in the coming quarters, including Spinny, Acko, Souled Store and Mintifi. Since 2020, the firm has raised nearly $1.33 billion across three vehicles, with the first India-focused fund launched in 2010 raising $350 million. The foundation model market shows similar maturity trends, with 5 startups marked as IPO outcomes and 87 active companies still operating, indicating a mature ecosystem for AI infrastructure investments. Strategic corporate investors remain central to the market, with NVIDIA, AMD, Microsoft, Amazon, Adobe, Google, Cisco, and Alibaba appearing across major foundation model rounds.
