Blackstone backs Neysa up to $1.2B as India boosts AI infrastructure

NeysaIndian AI startup, has secured support from US firm Blackstone as it expands its computing footprint in central India. press it to create a home AI skill.

Blackstone and investors, including Venture Growth Coaches, TVS Capital, 360 ONE Assets, and Nexus Venture Partners, have agreed to invest $600 million in Neysa, giving Blackstone a larger stake, Blackstone and Neysa told TechCrunch. The Mumbai-based startup is also looking to raise $600 million in debt financing as it expands GPU capacity, a significant increase from the $50 million it previously raised.

The agreement comes as the need for AI computing is happening all over the worldmaking barriers to providing special chips and data center power requirement train and run large models. The new AI assistants are stable – often they are called “neo-clouds” – have emerged to overcome this gap by providing dedicated GPU power and deployment faster than traditional hyperscalers, especially for businesses and AI labs with controls, latency, or customization.

Neysa works in the emerging sectorpositioning itself as a provider of custom, GPU-first infrastructure for enterprises, government agencies, and AI developers in India, where demand for local computing is still in its infancy but growing.

“Many customers want to use hands, and many of them want support around time and time with a 15-minute answer with our several solutions. And so those are the types of things that we offer that other hyperscalers do not,” said Neysa co-founder and CEO Sharad Sanghi.

Ganesh Mani, managing director at Blackstone Private Equity, said his firm estimates that India currently has just under 60,000 GPUs shipped – and expects that number to rise nearly 30 times to more than two million in the coming years.

This growth is being driven by a combination of government requirements, businesses in regulated sectors such as financial services and healthcare that need to retain local information, and examples of building AI within India, Mani told TechCrunch. Global AI labs, many of which count in India among their main usersthey are also focusing on putting computing power closer to users to reduce latency and meet data requirements.

The investment also builds on Blackstone’s growing push into data warehouse and AI infrastructure around the world. The company previously supported big data platforms such as QTS and AirTrunk, as well as specialist AI providers including CoreWeave in the US and Firmus in Australia.

Neysa develops and implements GPU-based AI tools that enable businesses, researchers, and public sector customers to train, optimize, and deploy AI models locally. The startup has about 1,200 GPUs and plans to expand that capacity, targeting shipments of more than 20,000 GPUs over time as customer demand grows.

“We see the need to do more than triple next year,” Sanghi said. Some of the discussions we are discussing have made significant progress; if it happens, then we can see it soon. We can see in the next nine months.

Sanghi told TechCrunch that the majority of the new capital will be used to invest in large groups of GPUs, including compute, networking and storage, while a small portion will go to research and development and building Neysa platforms for calls, monitoring, and security.

Neysa aims to more than triple its revenue next year as demand for AI services continues to grow, and is keen to expand beyond India over time, Sanghi said. Set to launch in 2023, the startup employs 110 people across offices in Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Chennai.