Nvidia Backs Indian Startup Simplismart in $14M Round to Make AI Inference More Efficient
As the AI boom strains global computing capacity, Nvidia has invested in Indian startup Simplismart through a $14 million funding round, betting on software that helps companies run AI models more efficiently—and, in many cases, with fewer GPUs.
Funding Details
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 approximately $100 million, including the new funding.
The Problem Simplismart Solves
Companies today are spending heavily on GPUs to power AI applications, but running those models reliably and economically at scale remains a significant challenge. Different workloads demand distinct trade-offs between speed, cost, and performance. Deploying and operating AI models to meet business requirements often requires complex manual adjustments.
Simplismart says its software automates much of that work, tailoring how models run on existing computing infrastructure rather than requiring customers to manage configurations themselves.
"Nobody actually needs the fastest or the cheapest inference," Amritanshu Jain, 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.
How the Technology Works
Simplismart's software sits between AI models and the computing infrastructure they run on, adjusting how models are deployed and managed to meet customer requirements. It can optimize factors such as response latency, request throughput, and compute consumption—helping companies get more out of their existing GPU stack.
The Bengaluru-based startup offers companies a way to deploy and run AI models through its own platform or within their existing cloud and on-premises infrastructure. It also provides tools to fine-tune models, automatically scale computing resources as demand changes, and monitor performance. Additionally, Simplismart enables cloud providers to build and operate their own AI inference services on GPU infrastructure using its software.
Customer Traction
Simplismart says it helped AI video-generation platform InVideo cut its GPU serving costs by 56% using its software. The startup also works with AI video companies HeyGen and Higgsfield, as well as enterprise AI startup Ema, among others. Indian cloud provider Yotta uses Simplismart's technology to power the serverless AI inference service within its Shakti Studio platform.
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 did not disclose the exact figure.
More than half of Simplismart's revenue comes from the U.S., despite the startup having more customers in India, according to Jain.
Nvidia Collaboration
Alongside its investment, Nvidia has been working with Simplismart on technical integrations, including around its Dynamo inference software, Jain told TechCrunch. The collaboration involves Simplismart's engineers and Nvidia's solutions architects, and Nvidia has also helped introduce the startup to potential customers and partners.
An Apparent Paradox
Interestingly, the investment presents an apparent paradox: Nvidia, the dominant supplier of AI chips, is backing software that can help companies run some workloads with fewer GPUs. Jain, however, argued that making AI inference more efficient could ultimately benefit Nvidia by making its hardware more attractive to customers and encouraging wider adoption of AI applications.
As inference workloads continue to grow in 2026—driven by agentic AI, real-time video generation, and enterprise-scale deployments—software that squeezes more performance from existing GPU capacity is becoming increasingly strategic for chipmakers and cloud providers alike.
via TechCrunch AI