Pune's CurvetAI raises Rs 6 crore pre-seed to build AI agents for complex tasks
Representative image: Innovalabs / Pixabay
Pune-based CurvetAI, which lets users work with many AI models in one workspace, raised Rs 6 crore in a pre-seed round led by Merak Ventures this week.
What Happened
CurvetAI, a Pune-based start-up that brings many artificial intelligence models into a single workspace, has raised Rs 6 crore in a pre-seed funding round led by Merak Ventures, with angel investors also taking part. The round was reported this week, between October 6 and October 9, 2026. The company, founded in December 2025 by Vivek Dubey and Utkarsh Gupta, said it will use the money to strengthen its technology infrastructure, grow its team and build AI agents that can carry out more complex, multi-step tasks on behalf of users.
Key Facts
- Amount: Rs 6 crore in a pre-seed round, led by Merak Ventures, with participation from angel investors.
- The company was founded in December 2025 and is based in Pune.
- Co-founder Vivek Dubey has previously worked at Infosys, Microsoft and Google; co-founder Utkarsh Gupta, who leads engineering, has worked at Samsung.
- CurvetAI lets users work with text, image, audio and video models in one place, compare their outputs and combine them within the same workflow.
- The company says it has more than one lakh monthly users, with India and the United States as its largest markets.
- It began as a platform for discovering AI tools and prompts and changed course after its founders saw that users had to leave the site to actually use the tools.
- It has announced collaborations with GnaniAI, Rumik AI and Alibaba, but has not disclosed their nature or commercial terms.
Why It Matters
The past two years have brought a flood of AI models, each good at something different: one for writing, another for images, another for voice. For ordinary users and small teams, that means juggling many subscriptions, logins and interfaces. Start-ups like CurvetAI are betting that there is value in sitting on top of these models and letting people use them side by side, rather than building a new model from scratch.
The company's own history shows how quickly the market is shifting. Its first idea, a directory of AI tools and prompts, ran into a basic problem: discovery alone did not keep users on the platform. Moving to a workspace where the tools can actually be used is a response to that, and the next step, AI agents, reflects where the wider industry is heading. Agents are systems that can plan and complete a chain of tasks, such as researching, drafting and formatting, with less step-by-step instruction from the user.
The round is small by global standards, but it is typical of the early-stage AI activity now spreading beyond Bengaluru to cities like Pune. Pre-seed money of this size typically pays for a small engineering team for a year or more while the company tests whether its users will pay.
The business carries clear risks. A layer that sits on top of other companies' models depends on their pricing and access rules, and large platforms are adding similar multi-model features of their own. CurvetAI will need to show that its workflow tools and agents give users enough reason to stay.
| Detail | CurvetAI |
|---|---|
| Founded | December 2025, Pune |
| Round | Rs 6 crore pre-seed |
| Lead investor | Merak Ventures |
| Monthly users (company figure) | Over one lakh |
| Biggest markets | India and the United States |
Impact
Short-term: The money lets CurvetAI hire engineers and build its first agent features, while it continues to grow its user base in India and the US.
Long-term: If the agent features work, the company could move from a tool for individual users to a product that small businesses use for routine work, which would open the way to a larger funding round.
Who is affected: Students, freelancers and small teams who use several AI tools, early-stage AI founders outside the big metros, and investors looking at the application layer of AI.
Key Takeaway
CurvetAI's Rs 6 crore round is a small but clear sign that investors are backing Indian start-ups that sit on top of existing AI models and turn them into everyday tools and agents.
Questions and Answers
What does CurvetAI do?
It runs a single online workspace where users can use text, image, audio and video AI models, compare their results and combine them in one workflow. It is now building AI agents for more complex tasks.
How much did CurvetAI raise and from whom?
It raised Rs 6 crore in a pre-seed round led by Merak Ventures, with angel investors also participating.
Who founded CurvetAI?
Vivek Dubey and Utkarsh Gupta founded it in December 2025 in Pune. Dubey has worked at Infosys, Microsoft and Google, and Gupta, who leads engineering, has worked at Samsung.
How many people use CurvetAI?
The company says it has more than one lakh monthly users, mostly in India and the United States. This figure has not been independently verified.
Disclaimer: Prepared by the Peepals newsroom from publicly available sources with AI assistance. Information is accurate to the best of our knowledge at the time of publication and may change. Images may be representative. Not professional advice. Report an error via our contact page.
Sourced and fact-checked by the Peepals Global Editorial Team
Reported, fact-checked and published by the Peepals Global Editorial Team.
