{"id":1954,"date":"2026-06-22T14:45:52","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T14:45:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=1954"},"modified":"2026-06-22T14:45:52","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T14:45:52","slug":"exclusive-upscale-ai-wants-to-be-the-next-cisco-and-it-just-raised-another-190-million","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=1954","title":{"rendered":"Exclusive: Upscale AI wants to be the next Cisco\u2014and it just raised another $190 million"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Santa Clara, Calif., startup raised $190 million in a Series A-1 round, bringing its total funding to $500 million and its valuation to $2 billion\u2014all in under 18 months, Fortune<\/em> learned exclusively. Premji Invest, a $15 billion investment fund that previously backed one of the founders\u2019 earlier exits, led the round. New investors include Nvidia, Salesforce Ventures, Temasek, and Seligman Ventures, alongside returning backers Mayfield, Tiger Global, StepStone, Maverick Silicon, and Prosperity7.<\/p>\n

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The opportunity Upscale is chasing is enormous. Spending on AI data center switches is forecasted to surpass $100 billion annually by 2030, according to Dell\u2019Oro Group, as Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Amazon race to build out AI infrastructure. The five largest tech companies will spend roughly $660 billion to $690 billion on infrastructure in 2026 alone, nearly doubling what they spent in 2025.<\/p>\n

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\u201cLegacy data center networks were designed for a pre-AI\u00a0world, not for the massive, tightly synchronized scale-up required by modern\u00a0AI\u00a0workloads,\u201d Umesh Padval, managing partner at Seligman Ventures, told Fortune<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Upscale is trying to solve an AI chip communication issue. Right now, the graphics processing units that power tools like ChatGPT mostly can\u2019t talk to each other efficiently unless they\u2019re all from the same manufacturer. It\u2019s like if your laptop could only connect to the internet if every device in your house was also made by the same company. Upscale is building what it calls an open-standard networking fabric that lets chips from different manufacturers work together at full speed. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe are trying to get those GPUs to talk the same language,\u201d cofounder and CEO Barun Kar told Fortune<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Nvidia\u2019s proprietary NVLink and InfiniBand technologies currently dominate AI data center networking and lock customers into Nvidia\u2019s ecosystem. But Upscale cofounder and Executive Chairman Rajiv Khemani doesn\u2019t see a contradiction. <\/p>\n

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\u201cThe world in the future is going to be a variety of heterogeneous AI systems,\u201d he told Fortune<\/em>. \u201cIt\u2019s not an Nvidia or our solution. It\u2019s a solution where everything coexists with each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lead investor Sandesh Patnam, managing partner at Premji Invest, sees the whitespace clearly. \u201cIf you look at everything that has been done over the last three or four years\u2014if the compute layer itself was never built for GenAI workloads, look at everything else in that stack,\u201d he told Fortune<\/em>. \u201cNetworking, storage, caching\u2014every single layer of the infrastructure was never built for this workload.\u201d Premji Invest previously backed Khemani\u2019s prior company, Innovium, through its late stages, then watched Marvell acquire it for $1.1 billion in 2021.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Khemani is the serial entrepreneur anchoring investor conviction. Before Innovium, which was the only startup in a decade to meaningfully crack Broadcom\u2019s lock on networking chip market share, he ran Intel\u2019s network processing business and served as COO at Cavium. <\/p>\n

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Kar, the company\u2019s CEO, was a founding team member at Palo Alto Networks and oversaw Juniper Networks\u2019 entire Ethernet portfolio before the two joined forces at Auradine, a blockchain and AI chip startup where Upscale was incubated.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Upscale\u2019s $500 million in funding, however, won\u2019t last forever in this business. Custom chip design at today\u2019s most advanced manufacturing nodes costs hundreds of millions of dollars before a product ships. In addition, suppliers increasingly want companies to commit to, and pay for, production slots up to two years in advance. The company has also scaled to several hundred employees in under a year.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be able to go to our suppliers and lock in that supply, people are interested in seeing how strong our balance sheet is,\u201d Khemani said. <\/p>\n

And competitive pressure is mounting. Nexthop AI, a direct rival focused on custom AI networking for the same hyperscaler and neocloud customers, closed a $500 million Series B round in March at a $4.2 billion valuation. Broadcom and Nvidia have effectively unlimited R&D budgets. And the open networking standard Upscale is building on\u2014backed by AMD, Intel, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and 80+ other companies\u2014still needs to prove it can match Nvidia\u2019s proprietary performance in real-world AI training.<\/p>\n

Asked whether this is the run to an IPO, Khemani didn\u2019t deflect. \u201cAn IPO would be an interesting milestone,\u201d he said. \u201cBut we think it\u2019s going to be much bigger than that.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The AI networking startup has now raised $500 million in under 18 months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1953,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chips"],"yoast_head":"\nExclusive: Upscale AI wants to be the next Cisco\u2014and it just raised another $190 million - Cross Country Moving Team<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=1954\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Exclusive: Upscale AI wants to be the next Cisco\u2014and it just raised another $190 million - Cross Country Moving Team\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The AI networking startup has now raised $500 million in under 18 months.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=1954\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Cross Country Moving Team\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-06-22T14:45:52+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\\\/?p=1954#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\\\/?p=1954\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/1b8121bfb9a1c55d1fff3fca675fceaa\"},\"headline\":\"Exclusive: Upscale AI wants to be the next Cisco\u2014and it just raised another $190 million\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-22T14:45:52+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\\\/?p=1954\"},\"wordCount\":777,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\\\/?p=1954#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/e8454af7c02cd334abb6fe49db0763fd.webp\",\"articleSection\":[\"Chips\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\\\/?p=1954#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\\\/?p=1954\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\\\/?p=1954\",\"name\":\"Exclusive: Upscale AI wants to be the next Cisco\u2014and it just raised another $190 million - 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