Today's pick
Simplismart
A Bengaluru-based AI infrastructure startup that builds the software layer between AI models and GPU infrastructure, letting enterprises deploy and scale inference across cloud, on-premises and regulated environments.
- Problem
- 8
- Traction
- 8
- Founders
- 7
- Market
- 8
- Novelty
- 6
Why today
Today's pick is Simplismart, the Bengaluru-based AI infrastructure startup that announced a 14 million dollar Series B on October 27, 2026, led by Dallas Venture Capital with Nvidia, Accel and Shastra VC also participating. Founded in 2022 by ex-Oracle and ex-Google engineers Amritanshu Jain and Devansh Ghatak, the company builds the software layer that lets enterprises run AI models efficiently across cloud, on-premises and bring-your-own-compute environments, and it says its annualised revenue run rate has grown 14 times over the past six months as customers like HeyGen, Higgsfield, InVideo and Shiprocket scale their own AI usage. The same day produced a cluster of other Indian deals: deep-tech startup Nova Spectral AI raised a 21.2 crore rupee seed round to build indigenous infrared sensor chips, social-intelligence platform Live2.ai raised 130 crore rupees in a pre-Series B, fintech Mochatrade raised 5.5 million dollars to bring US stock trading to Indian retail traders, and D2C snacking brand Troovy raised 100 crore rupees to expand offline. Simplismart stands out because its growth is now driven more by US enterprise customers than its home market, with Nvidia itself joining the round as AI inference costs become a bigger pain point industry-wide.
Problem
Running large AI models in production is expensive and operationally brittle: enterprises either rent GPUs they cannot keep fully utilized or hand control of their models and data to a handful of large inference clouds. Fine-tuning, scaling and monitoring generative models across cloud and on-premises environments requires specialized MLOps expertise most companies lack, and sectors like banking and insurance cannot send sensitive data to third-party inference endpoints at all. The result is enterprises either overpaying for idle GPU capacity or stalling AI rollouts altogether, a problem that has only grown more acute as more companies move from experimenting with AI models to running them at real production volume.
Product
Simplismart builds the software layer between AI models and GPU infrastructure rather than owning compute itself. Its inference engine tunes how models run for speed, cost and performance, while its orchestration platform handles deployment and scaling across cloud and on-premises setups. The company offers three pricing models: shared endpoints billed per token, dedicated endpoints that combine GPU rental with its software billed by usage and runtime, and a bring-your-own-compute option for regulated industries like banking and insurance that cannot send data to third-party servers. That flexibility lets Simplismart sell into both AI-native startups and compliance-heavy enterprises from the same platform.
Traction
Simplismart's annualised revenue run rate grew 14 times over the past six months, with roughly 55 percent of revenue now coming from the United States and the rest from India. Customers include video-AI platforms HeyGen and Higgsfield, AI video tool InVideo, logistics company Shiprocket, gig-work platform Apna and enterprise AI company Ema. Indian cloud provider Yotta uses Simplismart to power the serverless inference layer of its Shakti Studio platform. The company has not disclosed absolute revenue figures, but the pace of growth and the shift toward US customers were central to Dallas Venture Capital's decision to lead this Series B just two years after its Series A.
Team
Simplismart was founded in 2022 by CEO Amritanshu Jain, who previously worked in cloud infrastructure at Oracle, and CTO Devansh Ghatak, who worked on search algorithms at Google. The pair built the company's inference engine and orchestration platform around their shared background in large-scale infrastructure. Their technical pedigree helped attract early backing from Accel for the company's 2024 Series A and has since drawn Nvidia onto the cap table, a signal of credibility in a field where enterprise buyers are wary of unproven infrastructure vendors handling their production AI workloads.
Funding
Dallas Venture Capital led Simplismart's 14 million dollar Series B, announced October 27, 2026, investing close to 5 million dollars itself, with Nvidia, Accel, Shastra VC, Micromax and existing angel investors also participating. The round follows a 7 million dollar Series A led by Accel in October 2024, with participation from Shastra VC, Titan Capital and angels including Notion co-founder Akshay Kothari. Simplismart plans to use the new capital for platform development, a dynamic GPU scheduling layer, partnerships with cloud providers and sovereign AI initiatives, and expansion across North America and other global markets beyond its current US and India base.
Competitors
Simplismart competes in the crowded AI inference infrastructure market against well-funded players like Together AI, Baseten and Modal, as well as the big cloud providers' own inference services from AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure. Its differentiation is working across cloud, on-premises and bring-your-own-compute deployments rather than locking customers into one environment, which matters most to regulated buyers in banking and insurance. Nvidia's participation as an investor gives Simplismart a potential edge in chip-level optimization, but the company still has to prove it can hold share against larger, better-capitalized inference platforms as the market consolidates.
VC lens
Would YC fund it? Yes, Simplismart fits YC's pattern of infrastructure bets with technical founders and fast-growing usage metrics, though a Series B with Nvidia and Accel already on the cap table puts it well past the stage YC typically backs.
Biggest risk: Simplismart sits in an increasingly crowded AI inference market where cloud providers and well-funded rivals can undercut on price or bundle inference into broader platforms, and a 14x revenue run-rate over six months will be hard to sustain once comparisons are against a larger base.
Runners-up
Nova Spectral AI
An Indian deep-tech startup building short-wave infrared image sensor chips on standard silicon for drones, surveillance and autonomous vehicles, which raised a 21.2 crore rupee seed round led by Shastra VC. (Oct 27)
Live2.ai
A Bengaluru-based AI-native social intelligence platform that uses eight AI agents to monitor, publish and audit brand content across social media, which raised a 130 crore rupee pre-Series B led by IvyCap Ventures. (Oct 27)
Mochatrade
A Y Combinator-backed platform letting Indian retail traders access perpetual futures on US stocks, crypto and commodities via UPI, which raised a 5.5 million dollar seed round led by CoinFund. (Oct 27)
Troovy
A direct-to-consumer healthy snacking brand expanding from chips and puffs into namkeen and biscuits, which raised a 100 crore rupee Series B led by existing investor Fireside Ventures. (Oct 27)
Archive
47 reports · click a row to open it| Date | Winner | One-liner | Runners-up | Open |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-28 | Simplismart | 14 million dollar Series B led by Dallas Venture Capital with Nvidia participating, as the Bengaluru AI inference startup's annualised revenue run rate grew 14x in six months on the back of US customers like HeyGen and Shiprocket | Nova Spectral AI, Live2.ai, Mochatrade, Troovy | |
| 2026-10-27 | Bedrock Robotics | 600 million dollar Series C co-led by CapitalG and Emergence Capital at a 4.1 billion dollar valuation, as the Waymo-founded startup's retrofit kit for autonomous excavators moved from pilots to paid commercial work on job sites in Nevada, Texas and Arizona | Matiks, Nous, adsilico, Volare | |
| 2026-10-26 | Blacksmith | 66 million dollar Series C led by Sequoia Capital at a 1 billion dollar valuation, as the YC-backed CI platform's weekly jobs run grew from 5 million to over 90 million amid a flood of AI-written code | Enact Intelligence, QuantrolOx, Beyond Vision, Maxinsights | |
| 2026-10-25 | Flapping Airplanes | 1 billion dollar Series A at a 6 billion dollar valuation co-led by Index Ventures and Lux Capital, as the year-old AI efficiency lab's valuation quadrupled nine months after its seed with still no shipped product | Air Space Intelligence, Whop, Arda Industries, AuxoAI | |
| 2026-10-24 | CureBay | 100 crore rupee Pre-Series C led by IvyCap Ventures, as the rural healthcare startup's network of technology enabled clinics and community health workers across seven Indian states passes 1.7 million patients served | Slingshot Insurance, Firstwork, Karta AI, Chapter Home | |
| 2026-10-23 | Warhound | 200 million dollar round at a 1.2 billion dollar valuation from In-Q-Tel, Sequoia and 8VC, as Colossal Biosciences founder Ben Lamm and Anduril co-founder Palmer Luckey launch a company that genetically engineers and clones working dogs for the military and arms them with Anduril sensor gear | Enact, Beyond Vision, QuantrolOx, Indurex | |
| 2026-10-22 | Legora | 550 million dollar Series E at an 8.8 billion dollar valuation led by Atreides Management, as the legal AI company's annual recurring revenue doubled past 200 million dollars in six months while US in-house legal teams became its fastest-growing customer base | Pigment, Opply, Photon Bridge, Blacksmith | |
| 2026-10-21 | Daytona | 60 million dollar Series B at a 1 billion dollar valuation led by FirstMark, as the AI agent sandbox company's revenue run rate rose twenty-five fold in nine months on a customer list including Anthropic, OpenAI, Nvidia, Cursor, Cognition and Meta | Blackwall, Vessla, Linkener, Coherence Quantum | |
| 2026-10-20 | Tenstorrent | 1.5 billion dollar round at a 6.2 billion dollar valuation, more than doubling its 2024 mark, as chip architect Jim Keller's inference-chip startup turns down Intel and Qualcomm buyout interest to keep challenging Nvidia independently | Town, Hunar.AI, Rabot Energy, Otter Health | |
| 2026-10-19 | Modal Labs | 750 million dollar Series D led by Accel at a 15.75 billion dollar valuation, as the AI infrastructure startup says its annualized run rate crossed 1 billion dollars with usage tripling in five months, built on serverless GPU access for inference, training and agent sandboxes | OMass Therapeutics, Scanntech, North.cloud, Fortem Technologies | |
| 2026-10-18 | Mueon | 65 million dollar Series A led by Maverick Silicon, as the Portland semiconductor startup founded by two Intel veterans scales Cubelets, modular 3D blocks bundling compute, memory, power and cooling to cut AI data center power and density limits, already in use by AI chip startup d-Matrix | Estuary Biotherapeutics, Fission, Otter Health, HyLight | |
| 2026-10-17 | Chariot Claims | 10 million dollar Series A led by Silverton Partners, as the rebranded ClaimClam legal-tech platform scales automated matching of consumers to mass arbitration and class-action claims over hidden fees and hard-to-cancel subscriptions, building on more than 65,000 claims already processed toward an estimated 92 million dollars in settlements | Marklo, Siena, Rein Security, Peppermint | |
| 2026-10-16 | Salience Labs | 125 million dollar oversubscribed Series B led by Bullhound Capital, as the Oxford-spun-out photonics company wins new backing from AMD Ventures and Intel Capital for all-optical circuit switches meant to break the power and latency ceiling facing electronic switches as AI GPU clusters scale toward tens of thousands of chips | Navra, Type One Energy, Oratomic, Gallatin AI | |
| 2026-10-15 | Soufflé Therapeutics | 135 million dollar Series B led by Juvia Group, as the MIT bioengineer Robert Langer-founded biotech works to deliver RNA medicines to muscle and heart tissue, a problem that has stalled the entire siRNA drug class, backed by more than 3.5 billion dollars in big pharma partnerships before any program has reached the clinic | ICON, Pluto Security, Nous Research, Atomic Machines | |
| 2026-10-14 | Vitalize | 31 million dollar Series A led by Oak HC and FT, as the Y Combinator-backed startup unifying hospital staffing, scheduling, patient flow and capacity management expands after enterprise customers reported cutting manual scheduling work and premium labor spend | Gallatin AI, byteXL, Desible.ai, Credfix | |
| 2026-10-13 | Universal Quantum | 100 million dollar Series A co-led by DCVC and Firgun Ventures, a record raise for a UK quantum computing company, as the University of Sussex spinout races to prove its modular trapped-ion chiplet interconnect can out-scale newly public rivals Quantinuum and IonQ | Atlas Atomics, Type One Energy, Sabi, Catalyst | |
| 2026-10-12 | Manus | 500 million dollar funding round led by Boyu Capital and IDG Capital, the general AI agent's first raise since China blocked Meta's 2 billion dollar bid for the company and barred its founders from leaving the country, as Manus pursues a reported 4 billion dollar valuation on roughly 125 million dollars of annualized revenue | Oratomic, Matchpoint Therapeutics, Oxide Computer, Stuut | |
| 2026-10-11 | Arena | 200 million dollar Series B co-led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and Khosla Ventures at a 3.1 billion dollar valuation, as the company behind the Chatbot Arena leaderboard nearly doubles its valuation in ten months on roughly 100 million dollars of annualized revenue from selling AI evaluation and alignment benchmarking to labs and enterprises, while Scale AI's new Seal Showdown contests its neutral-referee position | Gallatin AI, Rein Security, Rivercell, TeddyHoldings.AI | |
| 2026-10-10 | Multiply Labs | 75 million dollar Series B led by Patrick Soon-Shiong's NantWorks with new investors AstraZeneca, Lingotto, Teradyne and Strange Ventures, as the decade-old biologics-manufacturing robotics company passes 100 million dollars raised on the strength of its first commercial sale, an up to 85 million dollar deal with Retro Biosciences, while competing against well-funded rivals Cellares and Ori Biotech to automate cell and gene therapy production | Zomint, Parakeet Health, OuterSignal, Efficient Computer | |
| 2026-10-09 | RougeTx | 58 million dollar Series A led by BioGeneration Ventures and Angelini Ventures with the European Investment Bank's Aurea facility and Kurma Partners also investing, as the Leiden University Medical Center spinout launches the first disease-modifying candidate for hereditary hemorrhagic telangiectasia, a bleeding disorder with no approved therapies, built on more than two decades of pericyte research | GMI Cloud, Varda Space Industries, doxx.net, Beyond Appliances | |
| 2026-10-08 | General Medicine | 120 million dollar Series B led by Andreessen Horowitz with Eli Lilly and Mercy Health joining, as the PillPack founders' online healthcare marketplace brings total funding to 152 million dollars less than three years after launch on hundreds of thousands of customers and an 80 Net Promoter Score | Noah, Nous Research, Buntar Aerospace, Monid | |
| 2026-10-07 | Vinci | 250 million dollar Series B at a 1.5 billion dollar valuation co-led by Advent, Temasek and Xora Innovation, as the Palo Alto physics foundation model startup jumps from a 46 million dollar seed and Series A disclosed last December to a tenfold valuation leap less than a year later, aiming its technology at chip design incumbents Cadence and Synopsys | Spiko, Hadrian, WhiteLab Genomics, Inbolt | |
| 2026-10-06 | Pandektes | 13.5 million euro Series A led by Munich's Alstin Capital, as the Copenhagen legal-research startup grows revenue sixfold and wins customers switching off LexisNexis, Westlaw, Beck and Karnov with an API-first legal data platform | OneByZero, Fleuret AI, Laki Power, RobCo | |
| 2026-10-05 | PaleBlueDot AI | 200 million dollar Series C at a 3.2 billion dollar valuation led by ComputeCore, as the Palo Alto AI compute platform nearly triples its valuation in under nine months on more than 5 billion dollars of signed customer contracts | Simple Energy, Elio Mortgage, Menos AI, SedMed | |
| 2026-10-04 | Flow Engineering | 50 million dollar Series B at a 750 million dollar valuation co-led by Valor Equity Partners and Atreides Management, as the AI-native systems-engineering platform for hardware teams grows to over 100 million requirements managed and adds General Motors, Anduril and Intuitive Machines as customers less than a year after its Series A | Miter, Kanu AI, Beltic, Satlyt | |
| 2026-10-03 | EliseAI | 350 million dollar round at a 4 billion dollar valuation led by Andreessen Horowitz and Bessemer Venture Partners, as the housing and healthcare conversational AI company nearly doubles its valuation in thirteen months on 200 million dollars of ARR and five straight years of 100 percent revenue growth | Kahua, Breye Therapeutics, Amara, Kuro | |
| 2026-10-02 | Armadin | 255.5 million dollar Series B co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Accel at a 2.5 billion dollar valuation, as Mandiant founder Kevin Mandia's agentic attacker-swarm security platform runs live attack campaigns for Fortune 500 and government customers seven months after stealth | Foundational, Seeds Fincap, Numeral, Chamelio | |
| 2026-10-01 | General Intuition | 220 million dollar Series B at a 6.2 billion dollar valuation, nearly tripling in three months, as the AI foundation model startup trains action models on billions of gameplay clips from its own sister company Medal | Varda, Jeeves, Sand.ai, Arivihan | |
| 2026-09-30 | Tiny Health | Oversubscribed $33M Series B led by B Capital as the at-home microbiome testing company posts 1,624% three-year revenue growth and quadruples its practitioner-facing business | Modulate, erad, Baselayer, Ande | |
| 2026-09-29 | Instinct | $1B Series C led by Sequoia, Benchmark and Coatue at a $10B valuation, a roughly 4x jump in five weeks, as its text-message AI agent passes 100,000 users with 10% daily compounding growth | SiMa.ai, Quartermaster, Outmarket AI, Humanos | |
| 2026-09-28 | Solcoa Industries | $75M seed ($45M equity led by Bain Capital Ventures plus $30M JPMorgan-anchored debt) to build a 500-tonne Nevada plant using a novel rare-earth metalmaking process, aimed at breaking China's 95% grip on metallization | Clastix, Prevision Medicine, Spiich, Barq | |
| 2026-09-27 | Ultraviolette | $85M Series E led by Yali Capital and TDK Ventures; Bengaluru performance EV motorcycle maker plans US entry by 2027 on 4-5x revenue growth | Micro1, Kasvu Therapeutics, HIFI, Dextr AI | |
| 2026-09-26 | Island | $400M Series F led by Evolution Equity Partners at a $6.4B valuation, more than doubling its 2024 valuation as the enterprise browser expands into governing AI agents | Cyera, Confido, Heidi Health, Firecrawl | |
| 2026-09-25 | Ema | $77M Series B led by Creaegis, more than quadrupling its valuation as every existing backer doubled down and Wipro scales its AI Employees to 240,000+ workers | Ando, Kasvu Therapeutics, HIFI, Nuvah | |
| 2026-09-24 | TEKEVER | $580M Series D led by UC Investments and Baillie Gifford; Ukraine-proven AI surveillance drone maker hits $6.4B valuation on a new 400M pound UK Army contract | Enveda Biosciences, Basecamp Research, Numeral, Brahma AI | |
| 2026-09-23 | Verda | $189M oversubscribed Series B led by Emergence Capital; profitable Nordic GPU cloud crosses $1B valuation on $165M ARR | Snorkel AI, Nexstrom, MacroCycle, Demoverse | |
| 2026-09-22 | BCI-Sonics | RMB 200M (~$30M) Pre-Series A led by HSG and Yunqi Capital; non-invasive ultrasound brain-computer interface racing China's invasive BCI leaders and OpenAI-backed Merge Labs | Spott, HighLife, CellPoint, Benford | |
| 2026-09-22 | Amber Electric | €49M Series E led by Morgan Stanley's 1GT; automates 50%+ of Australia's home batteries, expanding VPP software into Europe via E.ON | Corridor, Paymob, Unit1 Studio, Drivn | |
| 2026-09-18 | TypeSafe AI | $40M seed led by DCVC; "System One" model returns typed decisions for software, not chat — built by RLHF co-inventor Diogo Almeida | Space Epoch, Facilo, Treble Technologies, DheyaTech | |
| 2026-09-17 | Exein | $270M Series C at $1.7B valuation (30x in 2 yrs); kernel-level security layer for robots, drones and autonomous machines | Anew Labs, Delos Data, CADDi, AIUC | |
| 2026-09-16 | Euclyd | €200M+ Series A; Samsung-backed (investor + manufacturer) AI inference chip built to out-efficiency Nvidia, chaired by ex-ASML CEO | Profound, Flam, ENCOS, Nutshell Therapeutics | |
| 2026-09-15 | Fortaegis | $50M oversubscribed Series A; quantum-safe security rooted in silicon, chaired by Quantinuum founder Ilyas Khan | Qupital, Tandem Health, Atomarine, UniqYou | |
| 2026-09-11 | Positron AI | $875M Series C at $5B valuation; memory-first inference chips challenging Nvidia's HBM lock-in | The Boring Company, Mach Industries, Rogo Technologies, Swish | |
| 2026-09-10 | Cognition AI | $2B+ Series E at $48B valuation; Devin autonomous coding agent nears $900M run-rate | DigitalPaani, Algomatic Dynamics, Limetax, Fundly.ai | |
| 2026-09-09 | Bluecore Energy | Floating nuclear reactor barges for ports; $50M seed just 2 months after stealth launch | QNu Labs, ARC Ride, Circolife, Hope Care | |
| 2026-09-08 | Pixxel | $100M Series C, India's largest spacetech round; building orbital AI data centers | Nua, Navana.ai, GalaxEye, Atoms (Kalanick) | |
| 2026-09-07 | Medulance | GPS-dispatched ambulance network raises ₹24 Cr Series A-2 | Comet, Mokobara, Kit (Speakeasy), XDOF |
Sources
- Inc42 — Simplismart Bags $14 Mn To Expand AI Inference Platform
- SiliconANGLE — Simplismart raises $7M to help enterprises run AI models with rapid inference, full control
- Inc42 — Nova Spectral AI Raises ₹21.2 Cr To Build Indigenous Infrared Sensor Chips
- Inc42 — Live2.ai Raises ₹130 Cr To Scale AI Marketing SaaS Platform
- Inc42 — Mochatrade Raises $5.5 Mn To Build A US Stock Trading Platform For Indian Traders
- Inc42 — Healthy Snacking Brand Troovy Bags ₹100 Cr To Expand Offline Presence, Enter New Categories