Cognizant in talks to invest in Sarvam at a $3.5-4 billion valuation

Nasdaq-listed IT services company Cognizant is in talks to invest in Bengaluru-based AI startup Sarvam as part of a proposed raise of around $300 million at a valuation of $3.5-4 billion, The Economic Times reported on October 28, citing sources. Cognizant could acquire a small stake, and discussions are ongoing; neither company has confirmed the talks. The proposed valuation would be more than double the $1.5 billion Sarvam secured in June 2026, when it raised $234 million in the first close of a $300 million Series B led by HCLTech's $150 million investment, with Bessemer Venture Partners and existing investors Khosla Ventures and Peak XV Partners participating. A Cognizant investment would make it the second IT services major on Sarvam's cap table after HCLTech, as IT companies respond to generative and agentic AI automating parts of traditional outsourcing work. Sarvam has also held talks with large domestic enterprises to anchor the round. Founded in 2023 by Pratyush Kumar and Vivek Raghavan, Sarvam builds foundation models, computing infrastructure and enterprise applications aimed at Indian languages and local use cases; recent releases include the Sarvam Vision 2.1 document model, the Saaras V4 speech-to-text model and the Bulbul V4 Flash text-to-speech model.

DTT summary based on Inc42's report. The full article is on the publisher's site.