As AI data centers hit power limits, Peak XV backs Indian startup C2i to fix the bottleneck

As AI data centers hit power limits, Peak XV backs Indian startup C2i to fix the bottleneck

Power, reasonably than compute, is fast turning into the limiting think about scaling AI data centers. That shift has prompted Peak XV Partners to again C2i Semiconductors, an Indian startup constructing plug-and-play, system-level power options designed to lower 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 Series A round led by Peak XV Partners, 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 vitality demand accelerates worldwide. Electricity consumption from data centers is projected to almost triple by 2035, per a December 2025 report from BloombergNEF, while Goldman Sachs Research estimates data-center power demand may surge 175% by 2030 from 2023 ranges — the equal of including another top-10 power-consuming nation.

Much of that pressure comes not from producing electrical energy however from changing it effectively inside data centers, the place high-voltage power must be stepped down 1000’s of occasions before it reaches GPUs. This course of presently wastes about 15% to 20% of vitality, C2i’s co-founder and CTO Preetam Tadeparthy said in an interview.

“What used to be 400 volts has already moved to 800 volts, and will likely go higher,” Tadeparthy told TechCrunch.

Founded in 2024 by former Texas Instruments power executives Ram Anant, Vikram Gakhar, Preetam Tadeparthy, and Dattatreya Suryanarayana, together with Harsha S. B and Muthusubramanian N. V, C2i is redesigning power supply as a single, plug-and-play “grid-to-GPU” system spanning the data-center bus to the processor itself.

C2i co-founders Vikram Gakhar, Preetam Tadeparthy, Ram Anant, and Dattatreya Suryanarayana (Left to proper)Image Credits:C2i

By treating power conversion, management and packaging as an built-in platform, C2i estimates it could actually lower end-to-end losses by round 10% — roughly 100 kilowatts saved for every megawatt consumed — with knock-on effects for cooling prices, GPU utilisation and general data-center economics.

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“All that translates directly to total cost of ownership, revenue, and profitability,” Tadeparthy said.

For Peak XV Partners (which cut up from Sequoia Capital in 2023), the attraction lies in how power prices form the economics of AI infrastructure at scale. Rajan Anandan, the enterprise agency’s managing director, told TechCrunch that after the upfront capital funding in servers and amenities, vitality prices grow to be the dominant ongoing expense for data centers, making even incremental effectivity beneficial properties extremely helpful.

“If you can reduce energy costs by, call it, 10 to 30%, that’s like a huge number,” Anandan said. “You’re talking about tens of billions of dollars.”

The claims will likely be examined rapidly. C2i expects its first two silicon designs to return from fabrication between April and June, after which the startup plans to validate performance with data-center operators and hyperscalers that have requested to review the data, according to Tadeparthy.

The Bengaluru-based startup has constructed a team of about 65 engineers and is establishing customer-facing operations in the U.S. and Taiwan because it prepares for early deployments.

Power supply is one in all the most entrenched components of the data-center stack, lengthy dominated by large incumbents with deep stability sheets and years-long qualification cycles. While many newer corporations concentrate on enhancing particular person elements, redesigning power supply end-to-end requires coordinating silicon, packaging, and system structure concurrently — a capital-intensive method that few startups try and one that can take years to show in manufacturing environments.

Anandan said the real query now is execution, noting that all startups face technology, market, and team dangers when betting on how industries evolve. In C2i’s case, he said, the suggestions loop must be comparatively brief. “We’ll know in the next six months,” said Anandan, pointing to upcoming silicon and early buyer validation as the second when the thesis will likely be examined.

The guess also displays how India’s semiconductor design ecosystem has matured lately.

“The way you should look at semiconductors in India is, this is like 2008 e-commerce,” said Anandan. “It’s just getting started.”

He pointed to the depth of engineering expertise — with a rising share of global chip designers based in the nation — alongside government-backed design-linked incentives that have lowered the price and danger of tape-outs, making it more and more viable for startups to build globally competitive semiconductor merchandise from India reasonably than function only as captive design centers.

Whether those situations translate right into a globally competitive product will grow to be clearer over the coming months, as C2i begins validating its system-level power options with prospects.

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