Google’s AI Futures Fund and VC firm Accel’s pre-seed investment programme Atoms have selected five AI startups for ‘2026 Atoms AI’ cohort to fuel the next wave of pre-seed AI innovation.
In a statement, the companies said that the five startups were selected from the 4,000 applications received for the programme.
Accel and Google AI Futures Fund will co-invest up to $2 Mn (₹18.5 Cr), split equally between them, in the selected startups. Besides, the startups will be offered $350K in compute credits spanning Google Cloud, Gemini, and Google DeepMind resources.
“By providing these five startups with early access to our most advanced models and compute power, we’re helping them solve hard problems faster and more responsibly,” said Jonathan Silber, cofounder and director of Google AI Futures Fund.
Google and Accel announced their partnership in November last year to back Indian founders using AI for optimising work, creativity, software engineering and entertainment.
The programme officially began at Google Ananta in Bengaluru on March 11. Accel said that the programme will conclude in June with a visit to Mountain View, California, where founders will get hands-on guidance from AI leaders and the broader investor community.
With that, let’s take a look at the five startups that are part of the 2026 Atoms AI Cohort:
Dodge AI is building AI agents for ERP maintenance to replace the traditional spending on ERP consultants to maintain legacy systems. Its AI agents can spot and solve SAP AMS tickets and enhancements before they become a priority incident.
K-Dense is building an AI co-scientist to accelerate scientific discovery by helping researchers reason through complex problems in life sciences, physics, and chemistry. The statement said that the startup is developing open-source tools that are gaining strong adoption within the global research community.
LevelPlane is using AI to automate and streamline sourcing for auto and aerospace industries. It has built an operating system that connects to the ERP, reads drawings, manages supplier networks, and acts on the client’s behalf across the full sourcing cycle.
Persistence Labs is building voice AI agents for call centres. It lets clients instantly build an AI voice agent with their knowledge base that can be easily embedded on a website or used as a standalone solution. The AI agent analyses and learns from the text content to provide accurate answers about products or services.
Zingroll is building a streaming platform for AI-native movies and shows which helps AI creators connect with their audiences directly. The platform aims to provide Netflix-level quality with YouTube-like accessibility.
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