Nvidia backs Indian AI startup Simplismart in $14 million funding round
AI chip giant Nvidia has invested in Bengaluru-based startup Simplismart as part of a $14 million Series B funding round, betting on software that helps enterprises run artificial intelligence models more efficiently and reduce infrastructure costs, a report has said.
The funding round was led by Dallas Venture Capital and also saw participation from Accel, Shastra VC and Micromax.
The investment values the four-year-old startup at around $100 million, including the fresh capital, according to the TechCrunch report.
Founded in 2022 by former Oracle engineer Amritanshu Jain and former Google engineer Devansh Ghatak, Simplismart develops software designed to improve the deployment and operation of AI models.
The platform helps enterprises optimise performance, response times and computing costs without requiring significant additional hardware investments.
The investment comes at a time when organisations worldwide are increasing spending on graphics processing units (GPUs) to power AI applications, while also seeking ways to improve efficiency and lower operating costs.
Simplismart's software sits between AI models and the underlying computing infrastructure, automatically adjusting deployment settings based on customer requirements.
The company says its technology can optimise how quickly models respond, how many requests they can process and the amount of computing power they consume, helping businesses maximise utilisation of existing GPU resources.
According to Amritanshu Jain, companies are not necessarily looking for the fastest or cheapest AI inference solutions but rather systems that deliver the right balance of speed, performance and cost for their specific use cases.
The startup offers tools that allow enterprises to deploy and manage AI models either through its platform or within their existing cloud and on-premises environments.
It also provides capabilities such as model fine-tuning, automatic scaling of computing resources and performance monitoring.
Simplismart claims its software helped AI video-generation platform InVideo reduce GPU serving costs by 56 per cent. Its customer list also includes AI video firms HeyGen and Higgsfield, as well as enterprise AI startup Ema.
Indian cloud provider Yotta uses the company's technology to power the serverless AI inference service on its Shakti Studio platform.
The company said its annualised revenue run rate has grown 14-fold over the past six months, driven by rising customer usage.
More than half of its revenue currently comes from the United States, despite having a larger customer base in India.
