AI researchers leave OpenAI, DeepMind to build startups in India (opens the source in a new tab)
- Inc42 tracks researchers leaving global labs to build in India: Shyamal Anadkat, who led OpenAI’s Applied Evals team, founded Empirical Machines for AI-driven molecule and materials research; ex-DeepMind engineer Parth Sarthi’s Chariot builds speech-native models under the IndiaAI Mission.
- Former Google engineering director Anish Das Sarma’s Reinforce Labs red-teams enterprise AI. Empirical Machines is reportedly in talks to raise about $15 Mn, per Moneycontrol.
- Investors say lab pedigree helps recruit talent but does not prove a business; DeVC’s Rahul Mathur asks who will pay for the research.
- 235%
- YoY rise in Indian AI funding, Q3 2026 (Inc42)
- $15 Mn
- raise Empirical Machines is reportedly in talks for
Why it matters The scarce input in AI is people who have trained frontier models. If even a few build here, India gains not just companies but the researchers they go on to train.
Other side Pedigree is not product. Research takes years to pay off, compute is costly, and investors say customers, not résumés, will decide which of these startups survive.