Insider Brief
- Upscale AI has raised $190M in Series A-1 financing led by Premji Invest, bringing its total funding to $500M and valuation to $2B, with new investors including NVIDIA, Salesforce Ventures, Seligman Ventures, and Temasek, alongside existing backers Maverick Silicon, Mayfield, Prosperity7 Ventures, StepStone Group, and Tiger Global.
- The company builds a full-stack, open-standard AI networking fabric spanning silicon, systems, and software, connecting accelerators, memory, and storage into a single high-performance engine designed to eliminate network bottlenecks across large-scale training and inference workloads.
- Barun Kar, CEO of Upscale AI, said the funding will help the company scale its business and accelerate delivery of its AI-native networking technology as it engages with multiple hyperscalers and leading neocloud infrastructure providers on customer evaluations and deployments.
PRESS RELEASE — Upscale AI, Inc., a pure-play AI networking infrastructure company, announced it has raised $190 million in Series A-1 financing. This latest investment brings the company’s total funding to $500 million, and its current valuation to $2 billion, reflecting strong investor conviction in the AI networking market and Upscale AI’s unique innovation in driving open-standards solutions for it.
The Series A-1 round was led by Premji Invest, and included funding from new investors, NVIDIA, Salesforce Ventures, Seligman Ventures, and Temasek as well as participation from existing investors, Maverick Silicon, Mayfield, Prosperity7 Ventures, StepStone Group, and Tiger Global.
Upscale AI is reimagining networking for the AI era with a full-stack portfolio spanning silicon, systems, and software. Through a unified, open-standard AI fabric, the company connects accelerators, memory, and storage into a single high-performance AI engine purpose-built to eliminate network bottlenecks across large-scale, synchronized AI workloads, including training and inference of frontier models.
The company is actively engaged with multiple hyperscalers and leading neocloud infrastructure providers, with customer evaluations and deployments underway across scale-out and scale-up networking environments.
Upscale AI will use the new capital to scale the business and accelerate delivery of its advanced AI-native networking technology.
“AI infrastructure is being redefined at cluster scale, and networking is one of the most critical bottlenecks. Upscale AI is building a high-performance, open-standard AI fabric purpose-built for large-scale, synchronized workloads,” said Barun Kar, CEO of Upscale AI. “This investment reinforces our vision and enables us to scale the business as we engage with leading neocloud and hyperscale infrastructure providers to meet growing demand for open, interoperable AI infrastructure.”
“Rajiv, Barun, and the Upscale AI team are tackling one of the most critical bottlenecks in AI infrastructure, and they’re doing it with a world-class team and a differentiated architectural approach,” said Sandesh Patnam, Managing Partner at Premji Invest. “The progress we’ve seen since our initial investment has only deepened our conviction, and we’re thrilled to lead this round and double down on the company’s vision.”
“The next leap in AI performance will be won in the networking that ties compute, memory, and storage together,” said Navin Chaddha, Managing Partner at Mayfield. “What excites us is how Upscale AI is reimagining AI networking with an open-standard, full-stack approach that gets accelerators, memory, and storage operating in lockstep. At Mayfield, we invest in people first, and we’re proud to partner with Barun and Rajiv as they build an enduring company powering the era of frontier AI.”
“Building the future of AI requires a rethink of underlying data center infrastructure, particularly as organizations demand scalable, interoperable systems that avoid vendor lock-in,” said Emily Zhao, Managing Director at Salesforce Ventures. “Upscale AI addresses this challenge by combining a commitment to open networking standards with a zero-packet-loss architecture that maximizes hardware utilization. Their work is vital to unlocking the potential of high-density AI workloads, and this is the right team to be innovating here. We are thrilled to partner with them.”
“The next major bottleneck in AI data centers is networking, alongside compute,” said Umesh Padval, Managing Partner at Seligman Ventures. “As AI clusters scale across increasingly heterogeneous environments, open-standard fabrics will become critical to enabling performance, interoperability, and infrastructure flexibility. Upscale AI is addressing this challenge with a full-stack, open-standard architecture purpose-built for the realities of modern AI workloads. We’re excited to partner with repeat founders Rajiv and Barun as they build the next-generation networking company for the AI era.”
“What stands out about Upscale AI is the team’s ability to take on complex, system-level challenges and execute with clarity,” said John Avirett, Partner at StepStone Group. “We believe they are building with a long-term view of how AI infrastructure needs to evolve, with an innovative AI networking portfolio purpose-built for large-scale training and inference of frontier models.”
“Upscale AI continues to embody the type of category-defining innovation we look for as investors,” said Abhishek Shukla, Managing Director of Prosperity7 Ventures US. “Our decision to deepen our investment reflects our long-term conviction in both the team and the market opportunity ahead. As demand for AI networking infrastructure accelerates, we believe Upscale AI is well positioned to build lasting leadership in this space.”
“Upscale AI is one of the fastest-growing companies in the AI networking space,” said Rajiv Khemani, Executive Chairman of Upscale AI. “As the team makes rapid progress building out our product portfolio, this investment will help us execute on immediate priorities while advancing Upscale AI’s long-term ambitions.”
About Upscale AI
Upscale AI is a pure-play AI networking infrastructure company enabling heterogeneous compute through open-standard, full-stack, turnkey solutions. Its portfolio is purpose-built for ultra-low-latency networking, enabling breakthrough performance and scalability across AI training, inference, and generative AI deployments.
For more information, visit https://upscaleai.com.
Contacts
Media Contact:
Racepoint Global for Upscale AI
upscaleai@racepointglobal.com
