The Pulse
Empirical Machines’ Round Grows to $20M as Mettle Joins Peak XV
Empirical Machines is set to raise $20 million from Mettle Capital and Peak XV Partners, up from a previously reported $15 million round. The startup, founded by former OpenAI researcher Shyamal Hitesh Anadkat, is developing AI to accelerat
AI.info Team · Written with AI ·
A $5 million increase—and a new investor
Empirical Machines’ planned funding round has grown by $5 million to $20 million, with Mettle Capital joining Peak XV Partners as a co-investor, according to a Moneycontrol report published October 16, 2026. The proposed amount was previously reported at $15 million. The startup is founded by Shyamal Hitesh Anadkat, a former OpenAI researcher.
The reported investor lineup has also changed. Bessemer Venture Partners, which had been in discussions to participate in the earlier version of the round, is no longer part of the deal, Moneycontrol said, citing people familiar with the developments. The report describes the $20 million investment as planned; Empirical Machines and Mettle did not comment on Moneycontrol’s questions, and Peak XV had not commented on the earlier report.
Mettle and Peak XV return to the same deal
The investment would be Mettle Capital’s first, less than eight months after its founding partners Ashish Agrawal, Ishaan Mittal and Tejeshwi Sharma left Peak XV and set up the new fund in May 2026. Their departure followed disagreements over fund economics, including carried-interest allocation and payouts tied to Peak XV’s investment in Groww, Moneycontrol reported. The Empirical Machines deal would put the former colleagues and their previous firm on the same cap table.
Moneycontrol puts Empirical Machines’ valuation at about $80 million, unchanged from its earlier report on the fundraising discussions. That earlier coverage described the round as the startup’s first institutional raise. The latest report says the funding discussions evolved from that proposed $15 million financing to a larger round with a different investor mix.
AI trained against experiments, not just text
Empirical Machines says its mission is to accelerate scientific discovery with AI that learns from real-world experiments. Moneycontrol reports that the company’s work includes applications involving chemical compounds. The company’s website says it is built by leaders and founding team members from OpenAI, Sarvam AI and Google DeepMind, and operates across Bengaluru and the Bay Area.
Anadkat spent nearly four years at OpenAI, where he worked in Applied AI after joining in 2022, according to Moneycontrol. The report describes his work there as evaluating how AI systems performed on real-world tasks and using failures to improve them. It also says he returned to India earlier this year and that Empirical Machines is his first startup since that move.
The product is still under wraps
Empirical Machines’ public site offers a mission statement but no detailed product description; its page labels the product “coming soon.” The financing report does not specify how the $20 million would be spent, when the round is expected to close, or what scientific workflows the company will target first. Those details remain undisclosed alongside the planned investment.