Peak XV announces Surge 12 cohort with 18 early-stage startups across AI, robotics, space, and fintech

Peak XV on Tuesday announced Surge 12, its latest cohort featuring 18 early-stage startups working across artificial intelligence, robotics, space, consumer technology, healthcare, music and fintech. 

The cohort reflects three broad trends emerging in early-stage technology: familiar consumer behaviours are being reimagined around changing expectations; AI is evolving from a product feature into the underlying architecture of technology; and startups are increasingly applying technology to physical infrastructure and real-world challenges. 

Startups are rethinking familiar consumer behaviour 

Several startups in the cohort are building products around everyday consumer needs. August AI is developing autonomous clinical intelligence for primary care and has grown to nine million users across 160 countries. Ditto is seeking to move dating beyond conventional swiping, while Wingit is building a beauty platform for premium consumers in India. 

GameStock is applying competitive gaming mechanics to financial markets, while Hoola Health is developing a paediatric care ecosystem focused on children. Riffle is building a browser-based platform where users can record ideas, layer sounds, collaborate in real time and share music. 

AI moves from a feature to the core of products 

A second group of startups is building products where AI forms the underlying technology rather than simply an added feature. 

Alma is developing an AI-native approach to personal computing. Kello is building a people intelligence platform aimed at helping organisations unlock human potential at scale. Rosella is applying AI to commercial insurance brokerage, while Kindling is developing a storytelling operating system for technology startups. 

Reinforce Labs is working on tools for evaluating, red-teaming and remediating enterprise AI systems. Hiloop is building infrastructure for post-training open-weight models, allowing AI companies to run, track and improve model experiments at scale. 

Technology moves into the physical world 

The cohort also includes startups applying technology to physical infrastructure and environments that have traditionally been difficult to monitor. 

Puralink is developing autonomous robots capable of navigating underground pipe networks, helping infrastructure operators inspect assets without excavation. ULOOK is building autonomous satellite systems for radio-frequency sensing and spectrum intelligence from space. 

Several founders in the cohort bring significant experience from technology companies and research institutions. Mona Gandhi, co-founder of Kello, was Airbnb's first female engineer and previously founded Upraised. Her co-founder, Subramanya Jingade, previously co-founded AmbitionBox. 

Reinforce Labs founder Anish Das Sarma holds a PhD from Stanford and previously built a company acquired by Airbnb before leading AI and machine-learning teams at Google. Alma founders Nischith Shadagopan M N and Vinod Ganesan previously worked together at Microsoft Research and later became founding engineers at Sarvam AI. 

GameStock founder Antoine Mistico is a two-time founder and former professional baseball player, while ULOOK's founders have worked on more than a dozen satellite missions. Hiloop's founding team includes former Reducto engineers and a Cambridge computer science PhD graduate. 

Several founders also have a personal connection to the problems they are addressing. Hoola Health founder Deeksha Senguttuvan grew up in a family that built a hospital group. Puralink founder Harrison Crowe-Maxwell has worked on robotics since childhood and developed the company's patented drive technology from research on robot mobility inside pipes. 

Three startups in the cohort remain in stealth mode—a company focused on education, an applied AI lab and a medical products company. 

“What stands out about Surge 12 is that these founders are building these companies on first principles. They are questioning whether the underlying experience should work that way at all,” said Rajan Anandan, Managing Director, Peak XV and Surge. 

He said the cohort reflects emerging changes in how people create, shop, date, invest and access healthcare, as well as how companies hire, insure and operate. “AI is a major enabler, but increasingly it is becoming the architecture of the product rather than the product itself,” Anandan said.