Energy, quite than compute, is quick turning into the limiting think about scaling AI knowledge facilities. That shift has prompted Peak XV Companions to again C2i Semiconductors, an Indian startup constructing plug-and-play, system-level energy options designed to chop vitality losses and enhance the economics of large-scale AI infrastructure.
C2i (which stands for management conversion and intelligence) has raised $15 million in a Collection A spherical led by Peak XV Companions, with participation from Yali Deeptech and TDK Ventures, bringing the two-year-old startup’s whole funding to $19 million.
The funding comes as data-center vitality demand accelerates worldwide. Electrical energy consumption from knowledge facilities is projected to just about triple by 2035, per a December 2025 report from BloombergNEF, whereas Goldman Sachs Analysis estimates data-center energy demand may surge 175% by 2030 from 2023 ranges — the equal of including one other top-10 power-consuming nation.
A lot of that pressure comes not from producing electrical energy however from changing it effectively inside knowledge facilities, the place high-voltage energy should be stepped down hundreds of instances earlier than it reaches GPUs. This course of at present wastes about 15% to twenty% of vitality, C2i’s co-founder and CTO Preetam Tadeparthy stated in an interview.
“What was once 400 volts has already moved to 800 volts, and can doubtless go greater,” Tadeparthy instructed TechCrunch.
Based in 2024 by former Texas Devices energy executives Ram Anant, Vikram Gakhar, Preetam Tadeparthy, and Dattatreya Suryanarayana, together with Harsha S. B and Muthusubramanian N. V, C2i is redesigning energy supply as a single, plug-and-play “grid-to-GPU” system spanning the data-center bus to the processor itself.
By treating energy conversion, management and packaging as an built-in platform, C2i estimates it will possibly minimize end-to-end losses by round 10% — roughly 100 kilowatts saved for each megawatt consumed — with knock-on results for cooling prices, GPU utilisation and total data-center economics.
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“All that interprets on to whole value of possession, income, and profitability,” Tadeparthy stated.
For Peak XV Companions (which cut up from Sequoia Capital in 2023), the attraction lies in how energy prices form the economics of AI infrastructure at scale. Rajan Anandan, the enterprise agency’s managing director, instructed TechCrunch that after the upfront capital funding in servers and services, vitality prices turn into the dominant ongoing expense for knowledge facilities, making even incremental effectivity positive aspects extremely beneficial.
“If you happen to can scale back vitality prices by, name it, 10 to 30%, that’s like an enormous quantity,” Anandan stated. “You’re speaking about tens of billions of {dollars}.”
The claims shall be examined shortly. C2i expects its first two silicon designs to return from fabrication between April and June, after which the startup plans to validate efficiency with data-center operators and hyperscalers which have requested to overview the information, in accordance with Tadeparthy.
The Bengaluru-based startup has constructed a staff of about 65 engineers and is organising customer-facing operations within the U.S. and Taiwan because it prepares for early deployments.
Energy supply is among the most entrenched elements of the data-center stack, lengthy dominated by massive incumbents with deep stability sheets and years-long qualification cycles. Whereas many more recent firms deal with enhancing particular person parts, redesigning energy supply end-to-end requires coordinating silicon, packaging, and system structure concurrently — a capital-intensive method that few startups try and one that may take years to show in manufacturing environments.
Anandan stated the true query now’s execution, noting that each one startups face expertise, market, and staff dangers when betting on how industries evolve. In C2i’s case, he stated, the suggestions loop must be comparatively quick. “We’ll know within the subsequent six months,” stated Anandan, pointing to imminent silicon and early buyer validation because the second when the thesis shall be examined.
The guess additionally displays how India’s semiconductor design ecosystem has matured in recent times.
“The best way you must have a look at semiconductors in India is, that is like 2008 e-commerce,” stated Anandan. “It’s simply getting began.”
He pointed to the depth of engineering expertise — with a rising share of world chip designers based mostly within the nation — alongside government-backed design-linked incentives which have lowered the associated fee and threat of tape-outs, making it more and more viable for startups to construct globally aggressive semiconductor merchandise from India quite than function solely as captive design facilities.
Whether or not these circumstances translate right into a globally aggressive product will turn into clearer over the approaching months, as C2i begins validating its system-level energy options with prospects.
