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AI Engineers Day Mumbai - what we heard, what we learned, what it means for builders. Last Thursday, we brought together 150+ founders, engineers, and operators in Mumbai with OpenAI and Peak XV Partners at ATLAS SkillTech University for a day of honest, technical conversations about where AI is actually going. What stood out across 2 tracks: → The most promising apps aren’t chatbots - they’re focused systems: workflow automators, enterprise copilots, browser agents, QA agents. Specificity wins. → Evals are the new moat. Prompts get you started. Evals keep you running. → The real competitive advantage is workflow design and orchestration, not prompt engineering. → We’re moving from isolated AI features to autonomous agent ecosystems. The builders who get this early will define the next generation of software. Thanks to OpenAI’s Thomas Jeng & Arjun Gupta, Peak XV’s Akshay Agarwal, and our own Pratyush Choudhury ☁️ Choudhury for leading with depth and generosity. This is just the beginning. 🌩️ Aakrit Vaish Amritansh Chauhan #AIEngineersDay #MumbaiTechWeek #BuildersOfIndia #ActivateAI #OpenAI #PeakXV

The response to Activate’s 1:1 Founder Mentorship Sessions at Mumbai Tech Week 2026 has been incredible. 🚀 We’re down to the final few slots. At MTW, we’re bringing together a curated group of early-stage founders for focused 1:1 conversations with some of India’s leading founders. Mentors joining us include: • Dilip Asbe: MD & CEO, NPCI • Ashok Hariharan: Co-founder & CEO, IDfy • Vivek Khemani: Co-founder, Quantiphi • Vedang Patel: Co-founder, The Souled Store • Mayank Kumar: Co-founder, BorderPlus, upGrad • Avlesh Singh: Co-founder & CEO, WebEngage • Naiyya Saggi: Founder, Edition • Rishi Gupta: MD & CEO, Fino Payments Bank • Sibabrata (Shibam) Das: Co-founder & CEO, Atomberg • Sharad Sanghi: Co-founder & CEO, Neysa Networks • Somnath Chatterjee: Founder & CEO, Prismforce • Revant Bhate: Co-founder & CEO, Mosaic Wellness If you’re an early-stage founder building in AI or technology and want to be part of these conversations, apply now. Limited spots remaining. Register here - https://lnkd.in/grA3qfe3 📍 Mumbai Tech Week 2026 📅 May 29–30 | Jio World Convention Centre Aakrit Vaish Pratyush Choudhury ☁️Tech Entrepreneurs Association of Mumbai (TEAM)

Activate is showing up at Mumbai Tech Week 2026 and we’re going all in.🚀 This year, we’re joining MTW as the VC Category Partner, bringing together founders, operators, investors, and AI leaders shaping the future of India’s tech ecosystem. Here’s what we’re bringing to Mumbai Tech Week: 𝟬𝟭 Early-Stage AI Startup Showcase 40 curated early-stage AI startups showcasing live product demos at MTW. Live demos. Real products. Actual builders. Powered by Activate, DeVC & OpenAI. 𝟬𝟮 Signal Studio, Live from MTW Hosted by Varun Mayya, Signal Studio will feature candid conversations with founders, operators, investors, and AI leaders across both the days. Speaker insights, real conversations, and behind-the-scenes moments from MTW. Streamed live on YouTube. 𝟬𝟯 1:1 Founder Mentorship Sessions Leading founders and operators mentoring a curated set of high-potential early-stage startups through focused 15-minute sessions. For founders, by founders. Register here: https://lnkd.in/grfY8jHj 📍 Jio World Convention Centre, Mumbai 📅 May 29–30, 2026 See you at MTW. ⚡ Aakrit Vaish Pratyush Choudhury ☁️

Inside the Stack: Activate x NVIDIA Startup Mixer, Bengaluru. We're bringing together a small group of ~75 founders and operators building in AI for a candid evening on what it actually takes to move from working systems to scaled, production products. Hosted by Aakrit Vaish & Pratyush Choudhury ☁️ alongside the NVIDIA team, we'll dig into the parts of the journey that compound - and the parts that quietly break: Inference economics at scale. Stack consolidation vs. fragmentation. System-design choices that determine your production ceiling. GTM motions that actually open enterprise distribution. → NVIDIA's stack mapped to startup use-cases → Activate's view on where AI is headed across infra, products, and capital → Founder-led conversations on shipping from experimentation to production Expect a technical room, practical discussion, and a strong bias toward specifics over slideware. 📍 Bengaluru 📅 5th June, 2026 | 3:00 - 6:30 PM Invite-only, capped at ~75. RSVP here: https://luma.com/asad76pn Tobias Halloran Unnikrishnan A R Kavita Aroor

AI Engineers Day, Mumbai Edition, hosted with our friends at OpenAI & Peak XV Partners. We took AI Engineers Day to Bangalore in January, and the energy was something else. Now we're bringing it to Mumbai. This is a hands-on, builder-first day with two focused tracks: Engineers Track - Build with the SDKs Founders Track - Automate with Codex The day brings together founders, engineers, and operators for: 1. Deep sessions from OpenAI on agentic work 2. Hands-on build hours with $250 in API credits for all participants 3. Real conversations on what it takes to build and scale AI systems 📍 Mumbai 📅 28th May, 2026 | 4:00 – 8:00 PM A big thank you to ATLAS SkillTech University for being a generous venue partner, and to Tech Entrepreneurs Association of Mumbai (TEAM) for having us as part of Mumbai Tech Week. If you're building, shipping, or scaling AI, this one's for you. Register your interest here: https://luma.com/7h38q56g Aakrit Vaish Pratyush Choudhury ☁️

Some of the best founder conversations happen before there's a company to talk about. Wrapped up a great evening in Bangalore yesterday. 45+ operators and founders in one room, open networking, drinks, dinner, and a shared curiosity around the "should I build this?" question. The recurring theme: timing, conviction, and finding the right problem before you're too deep to see it clearly. No agenda, no slides. Just the kind of candid energy that makes you think differently on the drive home. Aakrit Pratyush Neha Amritansh

Last call for the Activate AI Fellows Program Summer 2026. 🚀 Applications close tonight at 11:59 PM. If selected, you won’t just work closely with some of the most exciting AI startups in the ecosystem. You’ll also be mentored by operators, researchers, and builders who have shaped world-class AI products, infrastructure, and companies. Meet the mentors joining the program: Garvit Juniwal: Leading India R&D at Glean, with deep expertise in enterprise AI, infrastructure, and distributed systems Debdoot Mukherjee: Leading AI and product engineering at Meesho across large-scale recommendation and commerce systems Anshul Bhide: Executive Director at Calsoft, with experience across AI, venture capital, startup operations, and business development Sriram Rajamani: Founding leader of Microsoft Research India and former Managing Director at Microsoft Research, with pioneering work in AI, software verification, and LLMs for software engineering Nirant Kasliwal: Founder of Scaled Focus, focused on reliable AI agents, evaluation systems, RAG, and production AI infrastructure Pratyush Choudhury ☁️: Co-founder at Activate, focused on building and scaling the AI ecosystem in India This fellowship is designed for people who want to build, learn fast, and spend a summer deeply immersed in the AI ecosystem. If you've been on the fence, get off it. https://lnkd.in/ezFa2_ht Aakrit Pratyush

Voice AI is going to be the defining AI opportunity for India.   At Activate, our mission is to not simply invest in Indian startups, but to help build the ecosystem around them. This means connecting global AI leaders with the country's best builders. That’s why we are excited to deepen our relationship with ElevenLabs, the world’s premier voice AI platform. Activate has joined the company's latest Series D financing as a strategic investor and local VC partner. This investment was made through a separate vehicle backed by Activate’s LPs. This partnership is more than just an investment. It's about creating bridges between global frontier AI companies and India’s early-stage AI ecosystem, helping founders here access the right networks as voice becomes a core interface for them. Activate looks forward to working with ElevenLabs to activate voice AI in India. Mati Carles Karthik Aakrit Pratyush

300+ applications in and the window is still open. We're back with the next set of host startups for Activate AI Fellows. 15 companies, 15 fellows, 8 weeks of building something real. Here's what's in store at the next four: 🔹 smallest.ai - The fastest, most realistic voice AI out there 🔹 Deccan AI - Provides high-fidelity human evaluation, reinforcement learning (RLHF), and specialized datasets to improve the accuracy and safety of large AI models 🔹AEOS Group - Creates content, experiences, and games with the latest advancements in generative AI driving down costs and increasing throughput. 🔹 Agrani Labs - Building AI GPUs and end-to-end software for enterprise and datacenter compute More companies coming tomorrow. Applications close May 15. https://lnkd.in/ezFa2_ht Aakrit Vaish Pratyush Choudhury ☁️

Imagine your first real experience in AI not being an internship, but an embedded role inside one of India's most exciting startups, working on something that actually ships. That's what Activate AI Fellows is about. This summer, fellows will be working on real problems across 15 of India's most exciting AI companies. We'll be sharing what that actually looks like, one batch at a time. Starting with these five: 🔹 Sarvam - India's own foundation model company 🔹 Aqqrue - AI-native data intelligence 🔹 Dashverse - The future of AI-powered dashboards 🔹 Pre6 - Building tools for tomorrow's founders 🔹 Scaled Focus - Enterprise AI that actually works at scale Swipe through to see what fellows will actually be working on inside each of these teams. More companies coming over the next few days. Applications close May 15. https://lnkd.in/ezFa2_ht Aakrit Vaish Pratyush Choudhury ☁️