Nexus isn’t going all-in on AI, keeping half of its new $700M fund for India startups

Whereas many enterprise companies appear to solely have eyes for AI today, Nexus Enterprise Companions is intentionally splitting its focus for its new $700 million fund.

The agency will again AI startups and search out India-focused startups in shopper, fintech, and digital infrastructure.

AI has soaked up a lot of the enterprise capital raised globally and the 20-year-old VC agency additionally sees AI as a defining technological shift. However it argues crowding right into a single, overheated class carries its personal dangers. India’s digital economic system gives a counterbalance: an increasing market the place AI adoption is rising and alternatives stay extra various.

For Nexus, that steadiness is rooted in its origins. The Delaware-headquartered agency, with places of work in Menlo Park, Mumbai and Bengaluru, has operated as a single fund and an built-in U.S.–India workforce since its founding in 2006.

It backs early-stage software program and India-focused startups from the identical pool of capital. Over time, its cross-border software program bets have encompassed a variety from infrastructure and developer instruments to AI agent startups. U.S. portfolio consists of corporations equivalent to Postman, Apollo, MinIO, Giga, and Firecrawl, which have grow to be broadly adopted in developer tooling and AI infrastructure.

In the meantime its India portfolio has broadened throughout shopper, fintech, logistics, and digital infrastructure. A few of its bets there embrace Zepto, Delhivery, Rapido, Turtlemint, and Infra.Market

“AI is a big inflection level, and we’re anchoring on that,” Jishnu Bhattacharjee, a managing companion at Nexus Enterprise Companions within the U.S., instructed Trendster in an interview. “However we’re additionally seeing that many of those AI improvements are literally getting used to serve the plenty higher.”

Nexus manages $3.2 billion in capital throughout its funds and has invested in additional than 130 corporations over time. The agency has recorded greater than 30 exits thus far, together with a number of IPOs, underscoring the depth of its early-stage, long-horizon strategy.

Abhishek Sharma, a managing companion at Nexus Enterprise Companions within the U.S., instructed Trendster the agency’s candy spot stays inception to seed and Collection A, typically starting with checks as small as a number of hundred thousand {dollars} or round $1 million.

Nexus, which operates with an eight-member funding workforce, started with a $100 million fund and has stored its fund dimension at $700 million since launching Fund VII in 2023. It usually raises each 2.5 to three years. Bhattacharjee stated the rationale for holding the eighth fund the identical dimension was the agency believes $700 million is the correct quantity for its early-stage technique.

“We don’t need to elevate cash for the sake of elevating,” he famous.

Regardless that India’s AI journey will not be as superior because the U.S.’s in lots of areas, Nexus believes India may leapfrog in a number of components of the AI ecosystem.

Bhattacharjee underlined the nation’s giant expertise pool, rising digital infrastructure, and demand for localized fashions that assist India’s many languages and repair wants. These dynamics, he stated, are pushing Indian startups to construct AI functions and brokers sooner, typically atop open-source instruments and rising home AI infrastructure corporations.

The companions pointed to corporations backed by Nexus, equivalent to Zepto and Neysa, for example how AI is taking form in India. They stated Zepto, the quick-commerce platform, makes use of AI extensively throughout its operations — from buyer assist to routing and achievement — demonstrating how shopper companies have gotten deeply AI-native. In addition to, infrastructure gamers like Neysa are rising to handle India-specific wants, together with sovereign AI workloads, localized information dealing with and assist for the nation’s many languages.

Nexus didn’t share fund metrics. The companions stated its funds have been realizing vital sufficient returns over time to largely fill this fund from returning restricted companions. The agency’s LP base spans the U.S., Europe, the Center East, Southeast Asia and Japan.