NVIDIA is expanding its role in India’s fast-evolving AI startup landscape.
The chipmaker has signed a multi-year partnership with Activate, a venture firm that backs artificial intelligence founders at a very early stage.
The partnership was announced at the India AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi. Rather than focusing only on established startups, the collaboration aims to support founders right from the idea stage. Activate often invests even before a company is formally incorporated, and now those early bets will be connected to NVIDIA’s global startup network.
Through this tie-up, startups funded by Activate will be brought into NVIDIA’s Inception programme. That means access to developer tools, technical training, computing resources and guidance on taking products to market. According to Activate founder Aakrit Vaish, companies in the portfolio will also have direct engagement with NVIDIA teams, along with access to certain proprietary models. Some may even see selected product releases before they are made public.
The startups will also be able to tap into NVIDIA’s wider AI ecosystem, including its Nemotron family of open models and NIM microservices. These tools are intended to help young companies move faster — from building prototypes to deploying scalable applications. NVIDIA’s support will also extend to reference workflows and practical deployment assistance.
For NVIDIA, the move fits into a broader effort to strengthen India’s AI pipeline. The company has already collaborated with venture firms such as Peak XV Partners, Accel, Nexus Venture Partners and Elevation Capital to back emerging AI startups. This new partnership pushes that involvement further upstream, closer to the earliest stages of innovation.
Activate itself was founded in December 2025 by Aakrit Vaish and Pratyush Choudhury, who previously served as a principal investor at Together Fund. The firm manages a $75 million fund and typically invests between $500,000 and $3 million in each startup it supports.
At a time when India’s AI ecosystem is gaining momentum, the partnership reflects a shared belief that early access to computing infrastructure, technical guidance and global networks can make a meaningful difference for young founders trying to build competitive products.
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