Blackstone backs Neysa with $1.2 billion in funding as India seeks to build domestic AI infrastructure

Neysa, an Indian AI infrastructure startup, has received backing from US private equity firm Blackstone as it scales up domestic computing capacity amid India’s push to build indigenous AI capabilities.

Blackstone and co-investors, including Teachers’ Venture Growth, TVS Capital, 360 ONE Assets and Nexus Venture Partners, have agreed to invest up to $600 million of seed equity in Neysa, giving Blackstone a majority stake, Blackstone and Neysa told TechCrunch. The Mumbai-headquartered startup also plans to raise an additional $600 million in debt financing while expanding GPU capacity, a sharp increase from the $50 million it raised earlier.

The deal comes as demand for AI computing surges globally, creating supply constraints for the specialized chips and data center capacity needed to train and run large models. Newer AI-focused infrastructure providers—often referred to as “new clouds”—have emerged to fill this gap by providing dedicated GPU capacity and faster deployment than traditional hyperscalers, especially for enterprises and AI labs with specific regulatory, latency, or customization requirements.

Operating in this emerging sector, Neysa positions itself as a GPU-first dedicated infrastructure provider for enterprises, government agencies and AI developers in India, where demand for on-premises computing is still at an early stage but rapidly expanding.

“A lot of customers want help, and a lot of them want around-the-clock support with a 15-minute response and some of our resolutions,” said Sharad Sanghi, co-founder and CEO of Neysa. “And those are the kinds of things we offer that some of the super scalers don’t.”

Ganesh Mani, a senior managing director at private equity firm Blackstone, said his firm estimates India currently has fewer than 60,000 GPUs deployed — and he expects the number to rise nearly 30-fold to more than 2 million in the coming years.

This expansion is driven by a combination of government demand, companies in regulated sectors like financial services and healthcare that need to keep data local, and AI developers building models within India, Mani told TechCrunch. Global AI labs, many of which count India among their largest user bases, are also increasingly looking to deploy computing power closer to users to reduce latency and meet data demands.

The investment also builds on Blackstone’s broader push into data centers and AI infrastructure globally. The company has previously supported large-scale data center platforms such as QTS and AirTrunk, as well as specialist AI infrastructure providers including CoreWeave in the US and Firmus in Australia.

Neysa develops and operates GPU-based AI infrastructure that enables enterprises, researchers, and public sector customers to train, tune, and deploy AI models locally. The startup currently has around 1,200 live GPUs and plans to significantly scale this capacity, aiming to deploy more than 20,000 GPUs over time as customer demand accelerates.

“We are seeing demand to more than triple our capacity next year,” Sanghi said. “Some of the conversations we’re having are at a fairly advanced stage; if they happen, we could see it sooner rather than later. We could see that in the next nine months.”

The bulk of the new capital will be used to deploy large-scale GPU clusters, including compute, networking and storage, while a smaller portion will be directed toward R&D and building Neysa’s software platforms for orchestration, monitoring and security, Sanghi told TechCrunch.

Neysa aims to more than triple its revenues next year as demand for AI workloads accelerates, with ambitions to expand beyond India over time, Sanghi said. Founded in 2023, the startup employs 110 people across offices in Mumbai, Bengaluru and Chennai.