Led by Y Combinator and SenseAI Ventures, the round also saw participation from Arka Venture Labs, Good News Ventures, Nivesha Ventures, among others
The startup plans to use the fresh proceeds to shore up its product offerings, achieve PMF, and expand presence in the US and India
Founded in 2024, Pipeshift is a modular orchestration platform that helps enterprises train, deploy, and scale open-source GenAI models
AI infrastructure startup Pipeshift has raised $2.5 Mn (INR 20.74 Cr) in its seed funding round led by Y Combinator and SenseAI Ventures.
The round also saw participation from Arka Venture Labs, Good News Ventures, Nivesha Ventures, Astir VC, GradCapital, and MyAsiaVC. Angel investors such as Zuess CEO Kulveer Taggar, Umur Cubukcu of Ubicloud, and Capillary Technologies cofounder Krishna Mehra also participated in the fundraise.
The startup reportedly plans to use the fresh proceeds to shore up its product offerings and achieve product-market-fit (PMF) by the end of this year. A chunk of the capital will also be utilised to expand Pipeshift’s market presence in the US and India and hire talent.
Founded in 2024 by Arko Chattopadhyay, Pranav Reddy and Enrique Ferrao, Pipeshift is a modular orchestration platform that helps enterprises train, deploy, and scale open-source GenAI models.
The startup claims that its offerings enable companies to deploy their AI models faster and maximise the production throughput. Its end-to-end MLOps (machine learning operations) stack enables enterprises to bring down their GPU infrastructure costs without any additional engineering efforts.
“Enterprises prefer open-source GenAI for the benefits of privacy, model ownership, and lower costs. However, transitioning GenAI to production remains a complex and expensive process, requiring multiple components to be stitched… Pipeshift’s enterprise-grade orchestration platform eliminates the need for such extensive engineering investments by not only simplifying deployment but also maximising the production throughput,” said SenseAI Ventures managing partner Rahul Agarwalla.
Pipeshift claims to work with over 30 companies, including NetApp.
The fundraise comes at a time when GenAI mania continues to grip the world. A number of startups have emerged in India over the past few years to offer use cases across sectors and help clients automate and streamline operations.
In total, India is home to over 200 GenAI startups that raised more than $1.2 Bn in funding between 2020 and the third quarter (Q3) of 2024. Earlier this month, AI-powered deeptech platform Netradyne entered the unicorn club after raising $90 Mn in its Series D funding round led by existing backer Point72 Private Investments.
Prior to that, AI-driven B2B SaaS venture RePut.ai emerged out of stealth mode and raised close to $1 Mn in its pre-seed funding round led by GrowthCap Ventures. Earlier this month, Bengaluru-based agentic AI startup Quash raised about INR 5.4 Cr in its pre-seed funding round led by Arali Ventures.
