Synopsis
Krutrim, Ola founder Bhavish Aggarwal's ambitious AI venture, has seen a significant leadership exodus and workforce reduction. Key AI and semiconductor leaders, along with over 60 linguistics staff, have departed as funding dried up, leading to the discontinuation of its AI agentic platform and the Bodhi 1 chip. The company is now pivoting to AI cloud services.Listen to this article in summarized format
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Khatri was the founding head of AI and based in Silicon Valley in the US, Sunit was heading design and Raj Kiran led the AI research group, exited the firm in the past quarter. Senior leaders of the semiconductor efforts include Sanjeeb Ghosh, Vyasa Maharshi Grandhi, Rathina Balan Thalaiappan, Vishnu KGJ and Maruthi Srinivas Narasimhan who have also left the company in the last six months, ET has learnt.
The company also laid off over 60 people in linguistics in early January, the last of the company’s data annotation team for its AI models. From 2025, the firm laid off over 200 people in its linguistics team, ET had earlier reported.
The company had to pause the work on AI models and semiconductors as funding dried up and leadership haemorrhaged, sources aware of the development told ET. The company has also discontinued its AI agentic platform Kruti, which was removed across the app stores of Google and Apple, and was not accessible on the web.
Krutrim has not responded to ET’s specific queries about its operations. However, after ET sent its queries, Krutrim issued a press statement, where it said it is pivoting to AI cloud services. “This repositioning follows a business realignment undertaken in late 2025, which involved a deliberate reallocation of capital and talent, including a pause on chip design initiatives to concentrate the company's resources on building and scaling its core AI cloud services stack,” the statement read.
Krutrim, founded by Bhavish Aggarwal, was launched in 2023 with an ambition of building AI models from India rivalling global platforms such as OpenAI. The firm raised $50 million in 2024 becoming India’s first AI unicorn. Aggarwal also made a Rs 10,000 crore commitment to develop Krutrim in February 2025. The plan was to have a full stack AI platform including large language models for language, speech and vision, semiconductors and cloud platform.
