A new generation of  entrepreneurs of Indian heritage are aggressively shaping the future of artificial intelligence (AI), often before they can legally rent a car. Rejecting traditional academic and corporate paths—sometimes dropping out of institutions like Harvard, Stanford or Columbia —these founders are creating disruptive companies that have already attracted capital from Silicon Valley’s most influential investors.

This article includes a list of groundbreaking AI startups founded by entrepreneurs of Indian diaspora who are currently below the age of 25.

1) Induced AI

Aryan Sharma and Ayush Pathak, both aged 21, are the co-founders of Induced AI, an AI automation platform that helps businesses automate repetitive back-office tasks. Both learned to code by age 13 and rejected college scholarships to pursue entrepreneurship in the AI space. Starting at age 14, Sharma sent cold emails to tech leaders worldwide, and the duo saved money to travel to San Francisco, where they networked with influential figures. 

​Induced AI enables users to describe workflows in plain English, which the platform converts into pseudo-code for automatic execution. The startup raised $2.3 million in seed funding led by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Peak XV Partners, with additional backing from SV Angel, Daniel Gross, and Nat Friedman’s AI Grant. Induced AI was also accepted into Batch 2 of the AI Grant accelerator.

2) Supermemory 

Dhravya Shah (20) is a Mumbai-born founder who taught himself coding during the pandemic on a laptop his middle-class parents bought him. He sold a Twitter formatting bot to Hypefury, using the earnings to study at Arizona State University before dropping out to focus on Supermemory. 

Supermemory is a universal memory API for AI applications that extracts insights from unstructured data like documents, emails, and chats, building dynamic knowledge graphs. It gives AI agents long-term memory and contextual understanding across multimodal inputs. The startup raised $2.6 million in seed funding led by Susa Ventures, with backing from Google AI chief Jeff Dean, DeepMind’s Logan Kilpatrick and executives from OpenAI and Meta.

3) Mercor 

Mercor was co-founded by three 22-year-old high school friends from San Jose, all former debate team members: Brendan Foody (CEO), Adarsh Hiremath (CTO) and Surya Midha (Chairman). Hiremath and Midha, both Thiel Fellows, famously dropped out of Harvard and Georgetown, respectively, to launch Mercor in 2023.

Mercor began as an AI recruitment platform connecting over three lakh global contractors with major AI labs like OpenAI and Google DeepMind. It quickly pivoted to the lucrative business of AI model training (data labelling).The company’s explosive growth led to a reported $500 million in Annualized Revenue Run Rate by mid-2025. This success culminated in a $350 million Series C funding round in October 2025, which instantly propelled the company to a staggering $10 billion valuation. This funding round cemented the founders’ status as the world’s youngest self-made billionaires.

4) Delv.AI 

Pranjali Awasthi (18) began coding at age seven in India and moved to Florida at 11. By 13, she interned at Florida International University’s Neural Dynamics of Control Laboratory, working on machine learning and EEG classification for ADHD research.

In January 2022, she launched Delv.AI at 16—an AI-powered research platform enabling users to query multiple documents simultaneously, extract data, and export results in CSV format. The platform reduces redundant R&D tasks by 75%. Delv.AI raised $450,000 from Backend Capital and Village Global, reaching a $12 million valuation in under a year. Now 18 and studying at Georgia Tech, Awasthi co-founded Slashy, an autonomous AI assistant she calls “ChatGPT with hands.” Slashy was accepted into the prestigious Y Combinator accelerator (S25 batch) and ranked number one on Product Hunt in June 2025. The company is built to act as an “AI Native Ops Layer,” aiming to save users 10+ hours a week by taking action across their work apps.

5) Cluely

Cluely was co-founded by 21-year-old Columbia University dropouts, Chungin ‘Roy’ Lee and Neel Shanmugam (COO), whose parents emigrated from India. They initially developed an AI tool called ‘Interview Coder’, but controversy at Columbia led to Lee’s suspension and both eventually dropping out, fueling their drive to succeed.

Their resulting company, Cluely, is an AI-powered desktop assistant that offers real-time, invisible support during tasks like meetings, sales calls and interviews. The platform works by proactively listening to audio and interpreting on-screen context to deliver insights via hidden overlays. Cluely has successfully capitalised on its bold, disruptive marketing, raising a $15 million Series A round from Andreessen Horowitz and achieving a $120 million valuation. The profitable startup currently boasts over $3 million in annualised revenue.

6) Giga ML

Varun Vummadi (25, CEO) and Esha Manideep (25, CTO), both Indian-origin, graduated from IIT Kharagpur (2019-2023). Vummadi rejected a PhD offer from Stanford and a $525,000 quant trader job; Manideep turned down a $150,000 HFT role. They met in their college dorm and founded Giga in 2023, and were named Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia (2024).​

Giga builds AI voice agents for customer support, initially focused on LLM fine-tuning before pivoting to agentic AI. The platform ingests company knowledge bases to create multilingual AI agents handling complex workflows with 90%+ resolution accuracy. It manages millions of customer interactions monthly for DoorDash, Shopify and others across ecommerce, finance and healthcare. Giga raised $3.6 million in seed funding (Nexus, Y Combinator), then $61 million in Series A (Redpoint Ventures, 2025), reaching a $510 crore valuation.

7) Greptile

Greptile is a San Francisco-based AI startup building a sophisticated co-pilot for software engineering teams. Its core product acts as an AI expert on any codebase, helping developers understand, review, and navigate complex code instantly using natural language. Greptile automates code reviews, catches bugs, and enforces coding standards with full codebase context.

The company was co-founded by Daksh Gupta (23), an Indian-origin entrepreneur and CEO, along with Soohoon Choi and Vaishant Kameswaran, all of whom studied at Georgia Tech. Gupta is known for his highly debated ‘9-9-6’ work ethic, advocating for 14-hour workdays to accelerate growth. Greptile has raised over $29 million in total funding, including a $25 million Series A round led by Benchmark Capital at a $180 million valuation.