Upscale AI, an AI networking startup primarily based in Santa Clara, is reportedly in talks to boost a brand new funding spherical at a valuation of about $2 billion, based on Bloomberg. The corporate is in search of between $180 million and $200 million. Remaining phrases haven’t been set, and the corporate has not commented.
If this spherical goes by way of, will probably be Upscale AI’s third fundraising effort because it launched seven months in the past. The corporate raised $100 million in seed funding in September 2025, adopted by an oversubscribed $200 million Series A in January 2026.
Tiger Global Management, Premji Invest, and Xora Innovation led the Sequence A, with different buyers together with Maverick Silicon, StepStone Group, Mayfield, Prosperity7 Ventures, Intel Capital, and Qualcomm Ventures. To date, Upscale AI has raised over $300 million.
Barun Kar, the CEO, and Rajiv Khemani, the Govt Chairman, co-founded Upscale AI. Each have began a number of firms and labored at corporations equivalent to Palo Alto Networks, Innovium, and Cavium, which Marvell later acquired. They developed Upscale AI at Auradine, Khemani’s AI and blockchain infrastructure firm, earlier than launching it publicly.
Upscale AI believes that conventional knowledge centre networking, which connects general-purpose servers, shouldn’t be well-suited to AI workloads. Its platform brings collectively AI clusters by connecting GPUs, accelerators, reminiscence, storage, and networking into one synchronised system. The SkyHammer structure focuses on scaling up networking on the rack stage to scale back latency and bottlenecks that gradual AI coaching and inference.
The platform makes use of open requirements like ESUN, Extremely Accelerator Hyperlink, Extremely Ethernet, SONiC, and the Change Abstraction Interface. This makes it a substitute for networking techniques from established firms like Cisco and Broadcom.
Upscale AI can be concerned in teams such because the Extremely Accelerator Hyperlink Consortium, the Extremely Ethernet Consortium, the Open Compute Venture, and the SONiC Basis.
