At an age when most peers focus on high school, Pranjali Awasthi launched an artificial intelligence startup, Delv.AI, which rapidly achieved a valuation of approximately ₹100 crore (around $12 million). Her journey began much earlier, laying the groundwork for her success in the competitive AI landscape.
Early Foundations and a Passion for Code
Born in India, Awasthi moved to Florida at age 11, fostering a deep curiosity from a young age. Guided by her engineer father, she started coding at just seven years old, learning to see computers as tools for creation. This early exposure to programming languages and competitive mathematics built a strong technical foundation.
Identifying a Critical Bottleneck
The pivotal moment arrived during the COVID-19 pandemic. At 13, Awasthi secured a virtual research internship at Florida International University, dedicating roughly 20 hours weekly to machine learning models alongside adult researchers. During this time, she observed a significant inefficiency: researchers spent countless hours manually sifting through vast collections of academic papers, PDFs, and databases to find specific insights.
Launching Delv.AI: "ChatGPT with Hands"
The beta launch of OpenAI’s GPT-3 in 2020 provided the missing piece, convincing Awasthi that machine learning could solve the data fragmentation problem. In January 2022, at 16, she officially launched Delv.AI. The platform aims to help enterprises and researchers instantly extract and summarize information from complex datasets, effectively acting as a “ChatGPT with hands.”
Delv.AI gained rapid traction during Miami Hack Week, where Awasthi caught the attention of tech entrepreneurs Lucy Guo and Dave Fontenot of Backend Capital. This led to a spot in HF0, a prestigious residency accelerator. Following a successful beta on Product Hunt, Awasthi made the bold decision to take a temporary break from high school to scale her burgeoning operation.
Significant Funding and Advanced Features
Investors quickly backed the young founder. Delv.AI secured approximately $450,000 (between ₹3.7 crore and ₹4.2 crore) from prominent funds including Village Global, On Deck, and Angel List Quant Fund, propelling the company’s valuation to the ₹100 crore milestone.
Today, Delv.AI functions as an advanced text analytics and knowledge management platform, streamlining research workflows through three core functions:
- Data Aggregation: Consolidating academic papers, enterprise PDFs, and online text sources into a unified interface.
- Insight Extraction: Answering specific queries and pulling key data points, minimizing manual reading.
- Data Visualization: Generating AI-powered heatmaps, treemaps, and pie charts for easy interpretation of complex information.
Continued Innovation
Awasthi’s drive for innovation continues. In March 2025, she graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology. She has since co-founded Salshy, an AI-powered automated email and digital executive assistant, further expanding her footprint in the evolving tech ecosystem. Pranjali Awasthi remains a significant young founder driving tangible innovation in the artificial intelligence sector.