Agrani Labs, a semiconductor startup by four former Intel and AMD veterans, is looking to raise one of the largest Series A rounds at $100 million to build AI inference chips that are compatible with Nvidia's software stack CUDA, according to four people aware of the discussions.
The firm is in early talks with Qualcomm, the US-based VC firm Battery Ventures and also government for potential investment opportunities, one of the sources cited above said. Peak XV, its existing investor, is likely to put in $20 million for the round on a pro-rata basis, two sources told ET. While the company is yet to finalise the valuations as the talks are still early, industry experts pegged that the firm is looking at $400-500 million.
Qualcomm, Battery Ventures, Peak XV and Agrani Labs did not respond to ET queries till press time.
Agrani Labs was started by four former Intel and AMD executives Dheemanth Nagaraj, Ashok Jagannathan, Srikanth Nimmagadda, and Rajesh Vivekanandham in 2025. The firm raised $15 million at a $36 million from Peak XV valuation last year. The company will compete with the likes of SambaNova Systems and Groq, which are based in the US.
If this investment goes through, this will be one of the largest Series A rounds in the Indian startup landscape, and the largest semiconductor startup ecosystem has seen in a single round. The company will use the funding for research and development, manufacturing, and engineering costs.
Globally, AI-focused hardware and semiconductor startups such as Cerebras, SambaNova Systems and Groq have raised over $1 billion each in funding. India, which is seeing an influx of startups in the semiconductor sector since the AI wave began in early 2023, is still nascent with companies raising between $10-15 million in Series A. One of the biggest challenges for hardware startups competing with Nvidia's software stack, CUDA, which allows developers to build programmes to interact with the graphic processing units (GPUs).