Nexus Venture Partners Closes $700 Mn Fund For Early Stage AI Bets

Adding new capital to its India–US investment strategy, venture capital (VC) firm Nexus Venture Partners has closed its eighth fund at $700 Mn to back startups in India and the US. In a statement, the firm said its eighth vehicle, Nexus Ventures VIII, will back early stage startups operating in segments like AI, enterprise tech, consumer services and fintech.

“Nexus’s integrated approach, with depth of experience and relationships across the Bay Area and India, enables it to focus on the two largest startup ecosystems in the world – the US and India,” the VC firm said in a statement.

Important to note that the total corpus of Nexus’ seventh fund, which it closed in 2023, was also $700 Mn. The firm has maintained its investment thesis of investing in both the countries since then. As per a report by TechCrunch, the VC plans on allocating the total corpus equally to both the startup ecosystems. 

Founded in 2006 by Naren Gupta, Sandeep Singhal and Suvir Sujan, the US-based VC firm primarily invests in startups at the seed or Series A stages across sectors. Overall, it manages $3.2 Bn  in capital across its eight funds and counts global pension funds, family offices, and endowment funds as its investors.

Its portfolio of investments includes listed Delhivery, IPO-bound IInfra.Market, Zepto, ride hailing major Rapido, unicorn Postman, among others. Most recently, the VC firm doubled down on Zepto in its $450 Mn funding round in October. Overall, the VC firm has invested in more than 130 startups to date, with over 30 exits. 

It has exited startups Delhivery, Eternal, MapmyIndia, Unicommerce, PaySense and SEDEMAC.

The closing of the $700 Mn fund comes amid a wave of new venture and private equity vehicles targeting India’s AI and advanced technology sectors. Just a day ago, ex-Haptik CEO Aakrit Vaish rolled out a new AI dedicated VC fund called Activate. Before that, in August, ex-Kae Capital partner Natasha Malpani also launched an early stage fund focussed on Indian AI-native startups called Boundless Ventures.

According to Inc42’s Indian Tech Startup Funding Report H1 2025, advanced hardware and deeptech startups raised $311 Mn across 43 deals in the first half of 2025, only a fraction of the capital flowing into other high-growth segments.

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