Indian artificial intelligence startup Emergent has raised $70 million in a Series B funding round led by SoftBank Vision Fund and Khosla Ventures, the company said on Tuesday, marking one of SoftBank’s most significant new bets in India in recent years.
The funding comes just four months after Emergent closed a $23 million Series A round backed by Lightspeed Venture Partners, Prosus and other investors, alongside additional capital from the Google AI Futures Fund in December. The latest round also saw participation from existing backers Prosus and Lightspeed, as well as Together Fund and Y Combinator. Emergent did not disclose its valuation.
SoftBank has been largely inactive in making new investments in Indian startups over the past three years, focusing instead on follow-on funding for existing portfolio companies. Its decision to lead Emergent’s round signals renewed interest in India’s fast-growing AI application ecosystem.
Founded by Mukund Jha, Emergent develops software tools that allow users to build and monetize applications using AI-driven workflows. The startup said it has already crossed 5 million users and reached $50 million in annual recurring revenue within just seven months of launch, an unusually rapid growth trajectory even by AI-sector standards.
“Emergent is early in shaping how software gets created and monetized over the next decade, not just the next product cycle,” said Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures, adding that users are quick to share and build on their successes.
Jha told Reuters that the fresh capital will be used to expand research and engineering teams in San Francisco and Bengaluru, as well as to accelerate product development. A significant portion of the investment will go toward advancing Emergent’s work on AI-powered coding agents, which are designed to automate and simplify software creation.
“There’s strong interest from people who want to build entire businesses on top of apps,” Jha said, adding that the democratization of software development through AI is shaping up to be a major long-term trend.
