Nvidia backs Indian startup helping companies run AI models with fewer GPUs

As the AI boom strains computing capacity, Nvidia has backed Indian startup Simplismart in a $14 million funding round, betting on software that helps companies run AI models more efficiently and, in some cases, with fewer GPUs.

Nvidia participated in the all-primary Series B round alongside Accel, Shastra VC, and Micromax, with Dallas Venture Capital leading the investment. The deal values the four-year-old startup at about $100 million, including the new funding.

Companies are nowadays spending heavily on GPUs to power AI applications, but running those models reliably and economically at scale remains a challenge. Different workloads demand distinct trade-offs between speed, cost, and performance. Deploying and operating AI models to meet business requirements often also requires complex adjustments. Simplismart says its software automates much of that work, tailoring how models run on existing computing infrastructure instead of requiring customers to manage those configurations themselves.

“Nobody actually needs the fastest or the cheapest inference,” Amritanshu Jain (pictured above, left), co-founder and CEO of Simplismart, said in an interview. He added that companies instead need to run AI models at speeds and costs that make sense for their specific applications.

Simplismart’s software sits between AI models and the computing infrastructure they run on and adjusts how models are deployed and managed to meet customers’ requirements. It says it can optimize factors such as how quickly a model responds, how many requests it handles, and how much computing power it consumes, helping companies get more out of their existing GPU stack.

Simplismart’s annualized revenue run rate has grown 14-fold over the past six months to an eight-figure sum, Jain told TechCrunch. The figure is based on recent customer usage rather than contracted recurring revenue and excludes revenue passed through to infrastructure providers, the company said. He did not disclose the exact figure.