As AI information facilities hit energy limits, Peak XV backs Indian startup C2i to repair the bottleneck
Energy, rather than computing, is quickly turning into the limiting factor in scaling AI information facilities. That shift has prompted Peak XV Companions to again invest in C2i Semiconductors, an Indian startup constructing plug-and-play, system-level energy options designed to cut power 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 complete funding to $19 million.
The funding comes as data center power demand accelerates worldwide. Electrical energy consumption from information 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 equivalent of including one other top-10 power-consuming nation.
A lot of that pressure comes not from producing electrical energy, however, but from changing it effectively inside information facilities, the place high-voltage energy should be stepped down thousands of occasions earlier than it reaches GPUs. This course at present wastes about 15% to 20% of power, 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 probably go larger,” Tadeparthy advised Naijatrend.
Founded 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 a built-in platform, C2i estimates it could lower end-to-end losses by round 10%—roughly 100 kilowatts saved for each megawatt consumed—with knock-on results for cooling prices, GPU utilization, and general data center economics.
“All that interprets into the complete price of possession, income, and profitability,” Tadeparthy stated.
For Peak XV Companions (which broke 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, advised Naijatrend that after the upfront capital funding in servers and amenities, power prices turn into the dominant ongoing expense for information facilities, making even incremental effectivity beneficial properties extremely beneficial.
“Should you be able to cut back power 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 will likely 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 evaluate the info, in keeping with Tadeparthy.
The Bengaluru-based startup has constructed a workforce of about 65 engineers and is establishing customer-facing operations within the U.S. and Taiwan as it prepares for early deployments.
Energy supply is among the most entrenched components of the data center stack, long dominated by giant incumbents with deep stability sheets and years-long qualification cycles. Whereas many more modern corporations deal with bettering particular person parts, redesigning energy supply end-to-end requires coordinating silicon, packaging, and system structure concurrently—a capital-intensive strategy that few startups try and one that may take years to show in manufacturing environments.
Anandan stated the actual query now could be execution, noting that every startup faces know-how, market, and workforce 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 is when the thesis will likely be examined.
The guess additionally displays how India’s semiconductor design ecosystem has matured in recent times.
“The best way to have a look at semiconductors in India is that it’s like 2008 e-commerce,” stated Anandan. “It’s simply getting started.”
He pointed to the depth of engineering expertise—with a rising share of world chip designers primarily based within the nation—alongside government-backed design-linked incentives, which have lowered the price and danger of tape-outs, making it more and more viable for startups to construct globally aggressive semiconductor merchandise from India rather than function solely as captive design facilities.
Whether or not these situations translate right into a globally aggressive product will become clearer over the approaching months, as C2i begins validating its system-level energy options with prospects.
