Blackstone Leads $1.2B Investment in Indian AI Infrastructure Startup Neysa to Scale Domestic GPU Capacity

Neysa, an emerging Indian AI infrastructure provider, has secured significant backing from U.S. private equity giant Blackstone as part of India's strategic initiative to develop indigenous AI computing capabilities. The investment consortium, led by Blackstone alongside Teachers' Venture Growth, TVS Capital, 360 ONE Assets, and Nexus Venture Partners, has committed up to $600 million in primary equity, with Blackstone acquiring a majority stake in the Mumbai-based startup.

The financing package extends beyond equity, with Neysa planning to raise an additional $600 million in debt financing to fuel its GPU infrastructure expansion. This represents a substantial scale-up from the company's previous $50 million fundraising round, reflecting the accelerating demand for AI compute resources in the region.

Addressing the Global AI Infrastructure Gap

The investment comes amid unprecedented global demand for AI computing capacity, which has created significant supply constraints for specialized processors and data center infrastructure required to train and deploy large-scale AI models. This market dynamic has given rise to a new class of infrastructure providers—commonly termed "neo-clouds"—that offer dedicated GPU capacity with faster deployment cycles compared to traditional hyperscale cloud providers.

Neysa operates within this emerging segment, delivering customized, GPU-centric infrastructure solutions to enterprises, government agencies, and AI developers across India. The company differentiates itself through enhanced customer support and service-level commitments that address specific requirements around regulatory compliance, latency optimization, and infrastructure customization.

"A lot of customers want hand-holding, and a lot of them want round-the-clock support with a 15-minute response and a couple of our resolutions. And so those are the kinds of things that we provide that some of the hyperscalers don't," explained Neysa co-founder and CEO Sharad Sanghi.

Market Opportunity and Growth Projections

According to Ganesh Mani, Senior Managing Director at Blackstone Private Equity, India currently has fewer than 60,000 GPUs deployed across its infrastructure landscape. However, Blackstone projects this figure will scale approximately 30-fold to exceed two million GPUs in the coming years.

This expansion trajectory is driven by multiple factors:

• Government demand for sovereign AI capabilities
• Enterprise requirements in regulated sectors (financial services, healthcare) necessitating data localization
• Domestic AI model development initiatives
• Global AI laboratories seeking to deploy compute capacity closer to India's substantial user base to reduce latency and meet data sovereignty requirements

Infrastructure Scaling and Deployment Strategy

Neysa currently operates approximately 1,200 GPUs and plans to aggressively expand this capacity, targeting deployments of over 20,000 GPUs as customer demand accelerates. Sanghi indicated that the company expects to more than triple its capacity within the next fiscal year, with potential acceleration depending on advanced-stage customer negotiations.

"Some of the conversations we are having are at a fairly advanced stage; if they go through, then we could see it sooner rather than later. We could see in the next nine months," Sanghi noted.

The capital deployment strategy prioritizes large-scale GPU cluster infrastructure, including compute, networking, and storage components, while allocating a portion to research and development efforts focused on orchestration platforms, observability tools, and security frameworks.

Blackstone's Strategic Infrastructure Portfolio

This investment aligns with Blackstone's broader strategic focus on data center and AI infrastructure assets globally. The firm has previously backed major data center platforms including QTS and AirTrunk, as well as specialized AI infrastructure providers such as CoreWeave (United States) and Firmus (Australia).

Company Profile and Growth Trajectory

Founded in 2023, Neysa has rapidly scaled to a team of 110 employees across offices in Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Chennai. The company aims to more than triple its revenue in the upcoming fiscal year, with strategic ambitions to expand operations beyond the Indian market over time.

The startup's platform enables enterprises, research institutions, and public sector clients to train, fine-tune, and deploy AI models within local infrastructure, addressing critical requirements around data sovereignty, regulatory compliance, and performance optimization.

Sources:
Neysa Official Website
McKinsey: AI Workloads and Hyperscaler Strategies
CNN: AI Chips Supply Chain Constraints
Goldman Sachs: Data Center Capacity for AI
McKinsey: Evolution of Neo-Clouds