At an age when most peers focus on high school, Pranjali Awasthi, an Indian-origin prodigy, launched her own artificial intelligence company, Delv.AI, securing significant venture capital and achieving a valuation of $12 million (approximately ₹100 crore).
Early Beginnings and a Passion for Code
Born in India, Awasthi moved to Florida at age 11, where her engineer father nurtured her early interest in technology. She started coding at just seven years old, viewing computers as tools for innovation rather than mere entertainment. This early exposure to programming languages and competitive mathematics laid a robust foundation for her future endeavors.
Identifying a Critical Bottleneck
The pivotal moment arrived during the COVID-19 pandemic. At 13, Awasthi undertook a virtual research internship at Florida International University. Dedicating approximately 20 hours weekly, she collaborated with adult researchers on machine learning models. During this time, she observed a significant inefficiency: researchers spent countless hours manually sifting through vast amounts of academic papers, PDFs, and databases to find specific insights.
Delv.AI: Revolutionizing Data Extraction
The launch of OpenAI’s GPT-3 beta in 2020 served as a catalyst, convincing Awasthi that machine learning could resolve this data fragmentation issue. In January 2022, at the age of 16, she officially founded Delv.AI. The startup's mission is to empower enterprises and researchers to instantly extract and summarize information from complex datasets, essentially acting as a “ChatGPT with hands” for data analysis.
Rapid Growth and Funding Success
Delv.AI quickly gained momentum, particularly during Miami Hack Week, where Awasthi captured the attention of prominent tech entrepreneurs Lucy Guo and Dave Fontenot of Backend Capital. This led to her securing a spot in HF0, a prestigious residency accelerator in San Francisco and Miami. Following a successful beta launch on Product Hunt, Awasthi made the bold decision to temporarily pause her high school education to focus on scaling her operation.
Investors swiftly recognized her vision. Delv.AI secured approximately $450,000 in funding from notable firms including Village Global, On Deck, and Angel List Quant Fund, propelling the company to its impressive ₹100 crore valuation. Today, Delv.AI operates as an advanced text analytics and knowledge management platform, streamlining research workflows through three core functions:
- Data Aggregation: Consolidating diverse sources like academic papers, enterprise PDFs, and online text into a unified interface.
- Insight Extraction: Providing direct answers to specific queries and pulling key data points, eliminating the need for manual reading.
- Data Visualization: Generating AI-powered heatmaps, treemaps, and pie charts for instant interpretation of complex information.
Beyond Delv.AI: Continued Innovation
Awasthi's entrepreneurial journey continues to expand. In March 2025, she graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology. She has since co-founded Salshy, another AI-powered venture described as an automated email and digital executive assistant. As artificial intelligence reshapes global industries, Pranjali Awasthi remains a prominent young founder driving tangible innovation within the tech ecosystem.