Google's AI Futures Fund is an initiative announced by Google on 12 May 2025 to invest in and collaborate with ambitious startups building the next generation of AI products. Unlike a conventional venture fund, it pairs capital with privileged access: early entry to Google DeepMind's latest AI models — Gemini, Imagen and Veo — alongside technical expertise, Google Cloud credits and, for select startups, direct equity investment from Google. The programme is led by Jonathan Silber, Co-Founder & Director of the AI Futures Fund.
For Indian founders, the fund carries special weight. In November 2025 it launched in India in partnership with Atoms, Accel India's early-stage platform — the first time the fund had entered such a collaboration anywhere in the world, according to The Economic Times. Silber told The Economic Times that India was chosen deliberately, because Google believes the next generation of AI founders will come from India.
What startups get
Selected startups receive four pillars of support. First, early access to select AI models from Google DeepMind, including Gemini, Imagen for image generation and Veo for video generation. Second, collaboration with Google experts — hands-on support from researchers, engineers, product managers, designers and go-to-market specialists from Google DeepMind and Google Labs. Third, Google Cloud credits and dedicated support from Cloud experts to build, train and scale AI-powered products. Fourth, an equity investment opportunity: select startups can seek direct investment from Google to fuel growth. The programme is open to companies anywhere Gemini is available, and applications are reviewed on a rolling basis, with investment size and timing kept flexible depending on the company's stage.
Fund size and stage
Google has not publicly disclosed a corpus or fixed cheque size for the AI Futures Fund — it works with startups at various growth stages, from early teams to scaling companies, and structures support around each startup's needs rather than a rigid ticket. This makes it less a traditional fund and more a combined capital-plus-platform programme.
Portfolio highlights
Early participants named by Google include Toonsutra, an Indian digital comics and webtoon app using Gemini's translation capabilities to make digital comics accessible across India's linguistic landscape; Viggle, an AI meme-making platform exploring new forms of video creation with Gemini, Imagen and Veo; and Rooms, a platform where users create, play and share interactive 3D spaces, prototyping richer content experiences with Gemini.
The India cohort with Accel Atoms
For the first India cohort, reported in March 2026, the two organisations selected five startups — K-Dense, Dodge.ai, Persistence Labs, Zingroll and Level Plane — from 4,000 applications. According to The Economic Times, each selected startup received $1 million in investment plus $350,000 in compute credits, along with access to Google's top foundational models and the mentorship benefits of the programme.
Why it matters for founders
The AI Futures Fund is one of the few capital sources that can change your product's ceiling, not just its runway — early access to frontier DeepMind models, plus the engineers who built them, is a genuine moat. For AI founders in India, the Accel Atoms partnership creates a dedicated lane with meaningful cheques and compute. Apply if your startup is genuinely building on — not merely wrapping — foundation models.