Accel Atoms

Atoms X was built for a specific kind of founder. What stood out in every one of the six selected startups wasn't just the idea, but the certainty that this is the one company worth everything they have. Some problems are so foundational, so far outside the map, that the people who go after them are in a category of their own. That's what this program is built for. Read more about why LeapTech, why now, and what this cohort signals about India's next decade in emerging tech. Pratik Agarwal • Ashutosh Sharma • Prosus • Prosus Ventures

The most important companies of the next decade won't iterate on the present. They will extend the map of what's possible, delivering a step-function change in the human experience. That's LeapTech. Today, we're proud to announce the six startups that embody it—introducing Atoms X cohort, backed by Accel & Prosus. • Praan: Building full-stack air infrastructure to optimize indoor air for human physiology and bring mountain-like air indoors. Founded by Angad Daryani. • QOSMIC: Developing optical communication infrastructure for 100x faster ultra-high-speed data transfer between satellites & Earth. Founded by Shreyaans Jain, Rohit Ramakrishnan, and Aloke Kumar. • Dognosis: Detecting multiple cancers from breath using canine olfaction, robotics, and AI. Founded by Akash Kulgod and Itamar Bitan. • Ethereal Exploration Guild: Building fully reusable orbital launch vehicles to dramatically reduce launch costs and increase the launch cadence for space access. Founded by Manu J. Nair, Shubhayu S., and Prashant Sharma. • Ferra: a guided home strength training system that helps you stay independent and pain-free as you age, with just five minutes a day. Founded by Rohit Patel and Anurag Dani. • And one more, in stealth, building computers controlled by thought. The next decade will see the rise of startups that fundamentally change how the world operates. Excited to back these six from day zero. Pratik Agarwal • Rishi Dogra • Accel in India • Ashutosh Sharma • Prosus Ventures • Akhilesh Agarwal • Ishtaarth Dalmia • Poonam Thakur • Dhruv Gupta

Some problems take a decade to solve, yet some founders choose them anyway. Meet them tomorrow.

Last evening, we brought together a room full of people building things the world doesn't fully understand yet. That's exactly the point. The first LeapTech Founder Connect, hosted alongside Prosus, was built around one idea: the founders working on the hardest, longest-horizon problems deserve a community that matches their conviction. Pratik Agarwal, Partner at Accel, opened the evening with a keynote on how we define LeapTech and why it matters — not as a category, but as a commitment to building before the world agrees. What followed was a conversation that stayed with the room. Pratik and Ashutosh Sharma, Head of India Ecosystem at Prosus, sat down with Adrian Schmidt, Co-founder and CEO of Sarla Aviation, and Nitesh Kumar, Co-founder of Leumas® — two founders navigating uncharted territories — who shared what keeps them certain and steady as they build: how they make decisions without a playbook, how they hold conviction when the path disappears, and what it actually feels like to operate at the edge of what's possible. Next up, Paddy Upton addressed the room with the perspective that only someone who has coached at the highest level can bring. The mental conditioning coach behind India's 2011 World Cup win spoke to the founders on how to build a life and a practice that can sustain a long, uncertain, high-stakes mission. Not tactics, but the deeper work of staying whole while building something the world hasn't seen yet. The evening carried into dinner with founders building for the long game and doing the work of their lives, talking to each other. That's exactly the community we're building with Accel Atoms. Rishi Dogra • Ishtaarth Dalmia • Akhilesh Agarwal • Prosus Ventures • Poonam Thakur

Three people who think about AI at the highest level came together in a room with our founders at Founder Connect. Prayank Swaroop, Partner at Accel, Josh Woodward, VP of Google Labs and Google Gemini, and Prateek Jain, Distinguished Scientist at Google DeepMind, joined us for a conversation on what it actually takes to build right now. Here are a few things that stood out: • Your first version will probably be something no one wants. Ship it anyway, within 50 to 100 days. That's when the real information starts. • Small teams, blurred roles, incentives tied to learning. This is how Google Labs moves. It's worth reverse-engineering. • Voice, fluency, and context assembly are still unsolved. That's not a warning, that's a whitespace. • Count the minutes you spend in front of your customer each day. Whatever that number is, it should be higher. Watch the full conversation from the link in the comments. AI Futures Fund · Jon Silber · Shekhar Kirani · Arthur Soroken · David Benjamin · Google for Developers

We brought Google's AI Futures Fund team into a room with Prayank Swaroop, Partner at Accel, in Bangalore, and let the conversation run. Jon Silber, Arthur Soroken, and David Benjamin from AIFF joined us for a conversation that usually stays behind closed doors: how AIFF was built inside Google Labs, why India was the first market they wanted to back, what actually stood out from 4,000+ applications, and whether founders should fear big tech (spoiler: they had thoughts). Watch the video from the link in the comments.

Watch Prayank Swaroop, Partner at Accel, and Jon Silber, Co-founder & Director of AI Futures Fund, in conversation with Ritu Singh on CNBC-TV18 as they discuss the rationale behind the AI Cohort 2026, why India was the first choice for AIFF's first global partnership, and what makes this cohort stand out against everything they've seen globally.

Since yesterday, many founders, builders, and members of the ecosystem have reached out, curious about the five startups selected from thousands of applications for AI Cohort 2026. We've answered all your questions, and more, here. Read on to learn what reviewing 4,000+ applications taught us about India's AI ecosystem, what made these five stand out, and where it's all headed. Prayank Swaroop · Jon Silber · Shekhar Kirani · Arthur Soroken · David Benjamin · Google for Developers · AI Futures Fund