Upscale AI announced it has raised $200 million in an oversubscribed Series A round as it works to establish what it calls the first pure-play AI networking infrastructure company, positioning networking as a primary constraint on scaling modern AI systems. The financing was led by Tiger Global, Premji Invest, and Xora Innovation, with participation from Maverick Silicon, StepStone Group, Mayfield, Prosperity7 Ventures, Intel Capital, and Qualcomm Ventures. The company said the new round brings its total funding to more than $300 million and follows a rapid fundraising trajectory, characterized by moving from a $100 million seed round to “unicorn” status within months.
The company is targeting a market shift in which clusters of GPUs and other AI accelerators require higher-bandwidth, lower-latency, tightly synchronized interconnects than those typically delivered by legacy data center networks. Upscale AI argued that traditional networking architectures were built to connect endpoints across general-purpose compute and storage, whereas AI infrastructure increasingly demands “scale-up” designs that unify resources at rack scale to support tightly coupled training and inference workloads.
Upscale AI said its approach unifies GPUs, AI accelerators, memory, storage, and networking into a single synchronized system. Central to that effort is its SkyHammer scale-up platform, which the company said is designed to “collapse the distance” between accelerators, memory, and storage to create a unified rack architecture. Upscale AI also emphasized its commitment to open standards and open-source technologies, citing ESUN, Ultra Accelerator Link (UAL), Ultra Ethernet (UEC), SONiC, and the Switch Abstraction Interface (SAI). The company said it is an active participant in the Ultra Accelerator Link Consortium, Ultra Ethernet Consortium, Open Compute Project, and SONiC Foundation.
With the new capital, Upscale AI said it plans to accelerate delivery of a full-stack platform spanning silicon, systems, and software, and to expand engineering, sales, and operations as it moves into commercial deployment. The company said it is seeing early traction with hyperscalers and AI infrastructure operators that are seeking scalable, open networking alternatives, and noted that its networking solutions are slated to ship this year.
KEY QUOTES:
“This investment accelerates our mission to fundamentally re-architect networking for the AI era. With a world-class team and strong customer pull, we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to build the open AI networking platform the industry has been waiting for.”
Barun Kar, CEO, Upscale AI
“Upscale AI has built extraordinary momentum in an exceptionally short time. The market is demanding open, scalable AI networking solutions, and Upscale AI is uniquely positioned to help customers break through today’s networking constraints.”
Rajiv Khemani, Executive Chairman, Upscale AI
“AI is fundamentally reshaping infrastructure, and networking is at the center of that transformation. Upscale AI combines deep technical execution with strong industry relationships to build the next generation of AI networking.”
Rohit Iragavarapu, Partner, Tiger Global
“As AI systems scale, interconnect efficiency has become a defining driver of performance and economics—not just raw compute. What stands out about Upscale AI is not only their purpose-built approach to scale-up networking silicon, but the depth of experience of a team that has successfully built and deployed this class of infrastructure before. Their ability to deliver proprietary-grade performance while embracing open standards reflects both strong technical conviction and real-world operating insight. We are excited to partner with Rajiv, Barun, and team again as they build critical infrastructure for the next generation of AI systems.”
Sandesh Patnam, Managing Partner, Premji Invest
“AI workloads are outpacing the capabilities of traditional networks. Upscale AI is rebuilding the entire stack from the ground up and leading the effort to democratize AI networking infrastructure at scale.”
Phil Inagaki, Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer, Xora Innovation
“Since our seed investment, Upscale AI has executed with impressive speed and discipline. Our continued support reflects strong conviction in both the market opportunity and the team’s ability to deliver.”
Andrew Homan, Managing Partner, Maverick Silicon
“From the outset, Upscale AI stood out as a startup well positioned to define its own path in the AI networking space. Upscale AI has already drawn significant customer interest, and we expect the team to translate that momentum into a strong roster of deployments with leading hyperscalers and AI infrastructure operators.”
John Avirett, Partner, StepStone Group
“Every computing era has its chokepoint. In the AI era, it’s networking. Barun, Rajiv, and their world-class team are reimagining the entire stack from first principles and building an open platform for networking that can support the next generation of AI infrastructure.”
Navin Chaddha, Managing Partner, Mayfield
“Upscale AI is perfectly aligned with Prosperity7’s vision of backing transformative companies that are pushing the edge of what’s possible. We take a long-term approach to investing, and we see significant potential for Upscale AI to capture strong market demand in the AI networking space in the coming years.”
Abhishek Shukla, U.S. Managing Director, Prosperity7 Ventures
“Scalability is the top priority for large enterprises evaluating networking solutions, and Upscale AI has architected its entire portfolio for scalability in the AI era. By delivering an open, turnkey solution, Upscale AI is removing complexity from networking infrastructure and unlocking scaled AI adoption for enterprises.”
Srini Ananth, Managing Director, Intel Capital
“As AI infrastructure scales, advanced networking is essential to meet the demand of AI workloads. As an early investor, we’re excited to support Upscale AI’s team as they push the boundaries of AI networking infrastructure.”
Quinn Li, Senior Vice President, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., and Global Head, Qualcomm Ventures
“Collaboration is key for accelerating the future of AI infrastructure. By adopting UALink early, Upscale AI is helping to foster an ecosystem centered on openness, choice, and interoperability.”
Robert Hormuth, Corporate Vice President, Architecture and Strategy, Data Center Solutions Group, AMD
“AI networking is on track to become a $100B annual market by the end of the decade. Upscale AI is entering at exactly the right moment with open, high-performance solutions built to scale.”
Alan Weckel, Co-Founder and Technology Analyst, 650 Group
“The networking market has reached a clear inflection point with AI. Upscale AI’s SkyHammer architecture makes them one of the most important companies to watch.”
Sameh Boujelbene, Vice President, Dell’Oro Group
