Nvidia backs India's Simplismart in $14M round to squeeze more from GPUs
What's the deal? Simplismart, a Bengaluru-based startup, has raised $14 million in a Series B round led by Dallas Venture CapitalDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, with Nvidia, Accel, Shastra VCDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, and Micromax participating. The deal values the four-year-old company at about $100 million.
What's the endgame? Simplismart's software sits between AI models and the computing infrastructure they run on, adjusting how models are deployed to meet customer needs. It says it can optimise response speed, throughput, and compute consumption — helping companies get more from their existing GPU stack.
Why now? Companies are spending heavily on GPUs, but running models reliably and economically at scale remains hard. "Nobody actually needs the fastest or the cheapest inference," said co-founder and chief executive officer Amritanshu Jain, arguing firms need speeds and costs that fit their specific applications.
By the numbers: Simplismart's annualised revenue run rate has grown 14-fold over the past six months to an eight-figure sum, Jain said. The figure reflects recent customer usage rather than contracted recurring revenue. More than half of revenue comes from the US, despite the startup having more customers in India.
Clients include AI video companies HeyGen, Higgsfield, and InVideo — which Simplismart says cut GPU serving costs by 56% — plus enterprise AI startup Ema. Indian cloud provider Yotta also uses its technology for serverless inference.
What could go wrong? The investment carries an apparent paradox: Nvidia, the dominant AI chip supplier, is backing software that can help run some workloads with fewer GPUs. Jain argued that making inference more efficient ultimately expands usage. The valuation and growth figures are also company-reported.
The signal: At $14 million, the round sits in the 51st percentile by size — mid-pack, but the strategic backer is the story. The deal fits Nvidia's broader push into India's AI ecosystem, which this year included investing in Sarvam AI and partnerships with local cloud and infrastructure providers. As the AI boom strains compute capacity, the bet points to a growing inference market where efficiency, not just raw chips, is becoming the battleground.
Read more: TechCrunch
Image credit: Simplismart
