Nvidia has joined a $14 million all-primary Series B round for Bengaluru-based AI infrastructure startup Simplismart, TechCrunch reported on October 27, in a bet on software that helps companies run AI models more efficiently and, in some cases, with fewer GPUs. Dallas Venture Capital led the round, with Accel, Shastra VC and Micromax also participating, valuing the four-year-old startup at about $100 million including the new funding. Simplismart says its software helped video platform InVideo cut GPU serving costs by 56%. Co-founder and CEO Amritanshu Jain told TechCrunch the Series B is closed and will not be extended, despite a report of larger fundraising talks.
What Simplismart Sells
According to TechCrunch, Simplismart’s software sits between AI models and the computing infrastructure they run on. It adjusts how models are deployed and managed to meet each customer’s requirements, optimising how quickly a model responds, how many requests it handles, and how much computing power it consumes. The aim, the company says, is to help customers get more out of their existing GPU capacity instead of managing those configurations themselves.
The Bengaluru-based startup offers companies a way to deploy and run AI models through its own platform or within their existing cloud and on-premises infrastructure. It also provides tools to fine-tune models, automatically scale computing resources as demand changes, and monitor performance. Cloud providers can also build and operate their own AI inference services on GPU infrastructure using its software.
“Nobody actually needs the fastest or the cheapest inference,” Jain told TechCrunch. He added that companies instead need to run AI models at speeds and costs that make sense for their specific applications. “Where we tend to win is where people have to be more stringent on their SLAs [service-level agreements] and TCO [total cost of ownership],” Jain said, referring to demanding performance requirements and tight cost constraints.
Why Nvidia Is Backing It
Nvidia participated in the round alongside Accel, Shastra VC and Micromax, TechCrunch reported. Alongside its investment, Nvidia has been working with Simplismart on technical integrations, including around its Dynamo inference software. The collaboration involves Simplismart’s engineers and Nvidia’s solutions architects, and Nvidia has also helped introduce the startup to potential customers and partners, Jain told TechCrunch.
The investment presents an apparent paradox, TechCrunch noted: Nvidia, the dominant supplier of AI chips, is backing software that can help companies run some workloads with fewer GPUs. Jain argued that making AI inference more efficient could ultimately benefit Nvidia by making its hardware more attractive to customers and encouraging wider adoption of AI applications. Nvidia’s own inference work continues in parallel, including Nvidia’s open 4GB Nemotron model for local voice agents.
Simplismart’s commercial traction, as reported by TechCrunch, includes a claim that AI video-generation platform InVideo cut its GPU serving costs by 56% using the software. The startup also works with AI video companies HeyGen and Higgsfield, as well as enterprise AI startup Ema. Indian cloud provider Yotta uses Simplismart’s technology to power the serverless AI inference service within its Shakti Studio platform.
Why It Matters
Simplismart is selling into one of the AI industry’s most crowded layers. According to TechCrunch, it competes with offerings from Nvidia itself, as well as major cloud providers and hyperscalers including Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, while a growing number of startups build tools to make AI models faster and cheaper to run. Demand for that work is rising because companies are spending heavily on GPUs while struggling to run models reliably and economically at scale.
The funding also shows where venture money is still flowing. Simplismart’s annualized revenue run rate has grown 14-fold over the past six months to an eight-figure sum, Jain told TechCrunch, though he did not disclose the exact figure. The figure is based on recent customer usage rather than contracted recurring revenue and excludes revenue passed through to infrastructure providers. More than half of Simplismart’s revenue comes from the United States, despite the startup having more customers in India. The round follows other recent startup financings covered here, including Omnichat’s $10 million Series A for its AI agent platform and Entire’s Git forge built for AI coding agents.
Simplismart plans to use the new funding to expand its presence in the United States, grow its team, and invest further in developing its inference software. Jain told TechCrunch that the United States remains a key market as the startup builds on its existing customer base there.
Background
Simplismart was founded in 2022 by Jain, a former Oracle engineer, and Devansh Ghatak, a former Google engineer, according to TechCrunch. The two met while studying at BITS Pilani, and the startup now employs 58 people. The funding announcement follows a report by The Economic Times that Simplismart was in talks to raise $40 million to $50 million at a valuation of $300 million to $400 million. Asked about the report, Jain declined to comment, saying the startup was not actively fundraising, and added that the Series B was closed and would not be extended.
Source: TechCrunch: Simplismart GPU round
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