Aviation and aerospace component manufacturers Parsec Aerospace and Alteon Energy are among those in fundraising talks. Parsec is in discussions with Lightspeed Venture Partners for a $4 million round, while Alteon has held talks with Lachy Groom Group for a $2 million fundraise, said people familiar with the matter.
Investor interest is also extending to healthcare, biotechnology, and precision manufacturing. Dognosis, which uses dogs’ olfactory abilities along with machine learning to identify diseases, recently closed a $4-6.5 million round with participation from Accel Partners and others.
Locksmith Bio, a biotech startup using AI in drug development, is in early talks with investor Sameer Brij Verma to raise fresh capital. Verma is also in discussions to invest in Leumas, a precision manufacturing firm serving pharmaceutical firms. He will be investing through his new venture Northpoint Capital.
ETtechLightspeed declined to comment. Accel, Parsec, Lachy Groom, Dognosis, Locksmith Bio, Verma, and Leumas didn’t respond to queries.
“We are starting to see a lot of founders, new founders, doing stuff in deeptech, and investors are following, and the ones who are investing now are going to get better deals,” said Shailesh Lakhani, former managing director at Peak XV.
The activity builds on a strong 2025, when early-stage technology startups raised more than $800 million across 350 deals, a more than 10% rise from the previous year, according to Tracxn. So far in 2026, such startups secured more than $300 million across 83 deals.
Growth-stage still lagging
Growth-stage funding, however, has been slower. In 2025, growth-stage deeptech startups garnered $406 million across 21 deals, a 12% decline from $463 million across 35 deals in the previous year, according to Tracxn. In 2026 so far, barring AI infrastructure startup Neysa’s $600 million round in April, growth-stage deals have remained muted, with about $56 million raised across nine deals.
“Yes, capital is hard to get but it is not excess like what we saw in consumer companies, which is good because obesity causes more deaths than starvation,” said Lakhani, who has launched the Ambition Capital fund to focus on early-stage deeptech and AI deals.
To be sure, many growth-stage rounds in the deeptech space are also in the making. Drone startup Airbound is in talks to raise around $30 million from Greenoaks, with participation from Lachy Groom Group, according to a recent media report. Precision manufacturing firm Ethereal Machines is raising around $30 million from Avataar Venture Partners and Peak XV Partners, as per media reports.
AI company Sarvam, and SoftBank-backed vibecoding platform Emergent, meanwhile, are discussing large funding rounds. While Sarvam is negotiating as much as $350 million at a $1.5 billion valuation, Emergent is said to be in talks to raise $250 million at a $1.5 billion valuation.
“I think the growth rounds are starting,” said Lakhani. “There are a bunch of deals in the market that will close very soon, and most importantly, once we see strong outcomes, like the Sedemac IPO, even Zetwerk, which has filed for IPO, and a couple of large private rounds, growth-stage rounds will only pick up. Make in India is now real with the government policies also helping companies.”
The accelerated deal activity comes at a period of a broader global rush into AI, with companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic bagging large rounds at steep valuations, sharpening investor interest in the category. The frenzy is also starting to influence decision-making by Indian venture firms.
Several large domestic VCs are now looking beyond India for AI deals, particularly in the US, where a deeper pool of AI-native companies is emerging. Peak XV, India’s largest venture capital firm, opened an office in San Francisco earlier this week, while Elevation Capital has hired Krishna Mehra in the US to lead investments in AI startups.
India, despite being the world’s third-largest startup ecosystem, has yet to witness AI or deeptech firms raise rounds of the scale seen in the US. Most of the activity remains concentrated at the early stage, where investors are continuing to focus on smaller deals in frontier technology companies. An expansion into larger capital commitments could mark a crucial maturing of the ecosystem.