Flam Raises $40 Million Series B on 15 September 2026
On 15 September 2026, Bengaluru and San Francisco-based artificial intelligence startup Flam announced a $40 million Series B funding round led by QED Investors. The round included participation from Claypond Capital, investor Martin Chavez, Datadog co-founder and CEO Olivier Pomel, venture investor Venky Harinarayan, and entrepreneur Shahrukh Khan. Existing investors RTP Global and Dovetail doubled their positions in the company. Flam was founded in 2021 by three BITS Pilani alumni — Shourya Agarwal, Malhar Patil, and Amit Gaiki — and has grown from a Bengaluru founding team to a dual-headquarters operation with engineering in India and enterprise sales in the United States. In the six quarters since achieving commercial scale, the company has signed more than 100 enterprise customers, including Google, State Farm, and Diageo.
What Flam Builds: Interactive AI Content at Scale
Flam builds AI tools for producing interactive content — visual and video material that adapts dynamically to viewer-specific data, context, or interaction. The company's primary product is Flicks: interactive videos that switch the person, product, or scene mid-playback using AI, without requiring manual re-editing for each variant. A Flicks campaign for a retail brand can show each viewer a different product colour, swap the on-screen talent to reflect demographic data, or adapt a scene to a regional context — all generated from a single source video, personalised to thousands of variants at scale. The company also offers Forge for AI-driven campaign creative production, Airboards for collaborative visual content, and Visual Agents for conversational and task-based interaction with AI-generated visuals. The company plans to use the Series B capital for research and development on its AI models, expanding the product suite, and scaling enterprise sales globally.
Why QED Investors Led the Round
QED Investors is primarily known as a fintech fund — its portfolio includes NuBank, Credit Karma, and ClearScore — making its lead position in Flam's Series B notable. The investment reflects a broadening thesis at QED toward AI-native companies where personalisation technology intersects with financial services marketing, insurance customer communication, and credit product engagement. State Farm, one of Flam's enterprise customers, is a direct-line insurance company that uses Flam for policyholder communication, mapping directly onto QED's existing portfolio sector focus. The round signals that enterprise AI for interactive content has reached repeatable revenue at scale — the threshold institutional funds with strict stage criteria typically require before leading a round. QED's participation also provides Flam with a network extending into financial services enterprises globally, representing a significant pipeline for the product's next commercial expansion phase.
Flam and India's AI Export Trajectory
One hundred enterprise customers — including a major technology company, a Fortune-list insurance group, and a global consumer goods company — is a significant commercial milestone for a startup founded in India in 2021. It demonstrates that India-origin AI companies can compete for and win large enterprise contracts in North America and Europe on the basis of technical capability and product quality. Flam's product requires proprietary AI model development, real-time video processing infrastructure, and deep integration capability — it is not a commodity service competing on cost. The roster of investors — which includes a cultural figure with strong recognition in both Indian and international markets alongside seasoned technology venture investors — reflects the growing attention India's AI startups attract from global institutional capital that was not historically active in Indian technology venture. In the first half of 2026, Indian AI startups collectively raised close to a third of the total venture capital the sector had accumulated in the entire period up to 2025, signalling a structural shift in investor confidence in India-origin AI companies at growth stage.
What the Flam Round Means for India's AI Founder Community
For Indian founders building AI products aimed at global enterprise markets, Flam's Series B is a clear reference point: named enterprise traction — real customers with named deployments and measurable outcomes — is the decisive factor for tier-one institutional investment, and that criterion is fully achievable from an India-origin founding team. The dual-headquarters model — India for engineering and product development, the United States for enterprise sales — has become a common structural choice among Indian AI startups targeting North American enterprises, and Flam's trajectory validates that model at Series B scale. For product teams inside larger Indian organisations building AI-powered content or marketing technology, Flam's personalisation approach — replacing rule-based conditional logic with generative AI models that produce genuine per-viewer variation — represents a reference point for what next-generation customer engagement infrastructure looks like in practice.
The Bottom Line
On 15 September 2026, Bengaluru-founded AI startup Flam closed a $40 million Series B led by QED Investors, with participation from Claypond Capital, Olivier Pomel, Martin Chavez, Venky Harinarayan, and Shahrukh Khan; existing investors RTP Global and Dovetail doubled their positions. Flam builds AI interactive content tools including Flicks — videos that switch person, product, or scene mid-playback — deployed across more than 100 enterprise customers in six quarters, including Google, State Farm, and Diageo. Founded by BITS Pilani alumni Shourya Agarwal, Malhar Patil, and Amit Gaiki in 2021, Flam will use the capital for AI model research, product expansion, and global enterprise sales. The raise confirms that India-origin AI startups can build global enterprise businesses on technical merit, and that fintech-focused institutional investors are actively positioning in India's AI-for-enterprise category.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does Flam do and who founded the company?+
Flam is an AI interactive content company founded in 2021 by three BITS Pilani alumni — Shourya Agarwal, Malhar Patil, and Amit Gaiki — and headquartered in both Bengaluru and San Francisco. The company builds AI tools for producing interactive content: visual and video material that adapts dynamically to viewer data, context, or interaction. Its primary product, Flicks, generates interactive videos that switch the person, product, or scene mid-playback using AI, producing thousands of personalised variants from a single source video without manual re-editing. Other products include Forge for AI-driven campaign creative production, Airboards for collaborative visual content, and Visual Agents for conversational AI-generated visual interaction. As of the Series B announcement on 15 September 2026, Flam has signed more than 100 enterprise customers in six quarters, including Google, State Farm, and Diageo.
What are the terms of Flam's $40 million Series B round?+
Flam announced a $40 million Series B funding round on 15 September 2026, led by QED Investors. Additional participants in the round include Claypond Capital, Martin Chavez, Datadog co-founder and CEO Olivier Pomel, venture investor Venky Harinarayan, and entrepreneur Shahrukh Khan. Existing investors RTP Global and Dovetail both doubled their positions, indicating strong conviction from the prior investor base. Flam plans to use the capital for research and development on its AI models, expanding the product suite, and scaling enterprise sales globally. The round marks the company's transition from early enterprise traction to a growth-stage company with 100-plus named enterprise customers across North America and Europe.
What is Flam Flicks and how does it work?+
Flam Flicks is an AI interactive video product that generates personalised video variants dynamically, without requiring manual re-editing for each viewer. Starting from a single source video, Flicks uses AI to switch the on-screen person, product, or scene mid-playback based on viewer-specific data — demographic profile, regional context, purchase history, or other signals available at delivery time. The result is that a retail brand's product campaign can show each viewer a different colour variant, swap the on-screen model to match their demographic, or localise a scene to their city, all from one source asset. This approach replaces rule-based conditional video branching with generative AI variation, reducing production cost while increasing personalisation depth. Flicks is in active production use at enterprise customers including insurance, consumer goods, and technology companies.
Why did QED Investors lead Flam's Series B despite being a fintech-focused fund?+
QED Investors is primarily known for fintech portfolio companies including NuBank, Credit Karma, and ClearScore, making its lead role in Flam's Series B notable. The investment reflects a broadening thesis at QED toward AI-native companies where personalisation technology intersects with financial services marketing, insurance customer communication, and credit product engagement. State Farm — one of Flam's named enterprise customers — is a direct-line insurance company that uses Flam for policyholder communication, mapping directly onto QED's existing portfolio sectors. The round also signals that enterprise AI for interactive content has reached the level of repeatable revenue at scale that institutional funds with strict stage criteria require before leading. QED's network in financial services globally represents a significant commercial pipeline for Flam's next expansion phase beyond its current enterprise base.
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TechPillow Team
Sharing insights on technology, product development, and the Indian tech ecosystem.
