Accel and Google’s AI Futures Fund have selected five startups for the 2026 Accel Atoms AI Cohort, choosing them from more than 4,000 applications as part of a joint effort to support early-stage AI companies building globally scalable technologies.
The selected startups—K-Dense, Dodge.ai, Persistence Labs, Zingroll, and LevelPlane—operate across sectors, including enterprise software, voice automation, entertainment, and industrial manufacturing.
Each startup will receive up to $2 million in co-investment, split between Accel and Google’s AI Futures Fund, along with up to $350,000 in compute credits for Google Cloud, Gemini, and Google DeepMind infrastructure.
The programme combines Accel’s early-stage startup backing with Google’s AI infrastructure and models to help founders build and scale AI-first products from the earliest stages. The companies in the 2026 cohort reflect a broader shift in AI innovation toward deep industry applications rather than consumer-facing experimentation, the fund stated.
“We are entering a phase where AI is moving from a novelty to a core piece of industrial and scientific infrastructure,” Jonathan Silber, Co-founder and Director of the Google AI Futures Fund, said in a statement. “By providing these five startups with early access to our most advanced models and compute power, we’re helping them solve hard problems faster and more responsibly.”
Among the selected startups, K-Dense is building an AI “co-scientist” designed to help researchers solve complex problems across life sciences, physics, and chemistry. Dodge.ai, founded in 2025 in San Francisco, is developing autonomous AI agents to modernise ERP management in SAP environments.
Meanwhile, Persistence Labs is focusing on voice AI solutions for call centres, aiming to automate large-scale customer service operations. Zingroll, another San Francisco-based startup, is building an AI-powered streaming platform designed to produce high-quality AI-generated movies and shows, while LevelPlane is applying AI-driven automation to manufacturing processes in the automotive and aerospace sectors.
“Atoms has always been about backing founders at the earliest moment of possibility, when it’s just ambition and insight. We believe India’s most driven founders can compete and win on a global stage from day one, and with Google alongside us, that conviction now comes with an unmatched launchpad,” Prayank Swaroop and Shekhar Kirani, Partners at Accel, added.
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