Rather than computing power, it is quickly becoming the limiting factor in scaling AI data centers. This shift prompted Peak XV Partners to back C2i Semiconductors, an Indian startup creating plug-and-play, system power solutions designed to reduce energy losses and improve the economics of large-scale AI infrastructure.
C2i (which stands for Conversion Control and Intelligence) has raised $15 million in a Series A round led by Peak XV Partners, with participation from Yali Deeptech and TDK Ventures, bringing the two-year-old startup’s total funding to $19 million.
The investment comes as demand for data center power accelerates globally. According to a December 2025 report by BloombergNEF, data center electricity use will nearly triple by 2035, according to December 2025 estimates, while Goldman Sachs Research estimates that data center energy demand could grow 175% by 2030 from 2023 levels – the equivalent of adding another top energy-consuming country.
Much of this load comes not from generating electricity, but from converting it efficiently in data centers, where high-voltage power must be reduced thousands of times before it reaches the GPU. The process currently wastes about 15% to 20% of energy, C2i co-founder and CTO Preetam Tadeparthy said in an interview.
“What used to be 400 volts has already moved to 800 volts and will probably go even higher,” Tadeparthy told TechCrunch.
Founded in 2024 by former Texas Instruments executives Ram Anant, Vikram Gakhar, Preetam Tadeparthy and Dattatreya Suryanarayana, along with Harsha S. B and Muthususubramanian N. V, C2i is reimagining power delivery as a single plug-and-play “network processor and data center bus”.
C2i estimates that by transferring power, managing and packaging behind an integrated platform, it can reduce end-to-end losses by around 10% – roughly 100 kilowatts saved for every megawatt consumed – with knock-on effects on cooling costs, GPU utilization and overall data center economics.
Techcrunch event
Boston, MA
|
June 23, 2026
“All of this translates directly into total cost of ownership, revenue and profitability,” said Tadeparthy.
For Peak XV Partners (which spun off from Sequoia Capital in 2023), the appeal lies in how energy costs shape the economics of AI infrastructure at scale. Rajan Anandan, managing director of the venture firm, told TechCrunch that after the initial capital investment in servers and equipment, energy costs become the dominant ongoing expense of data centers, so even the efficiency gains are very valuable.
“If you can reduce energy costs by, say, 10 to 30%, that’s like a huge number,” Anandan said. “You’re talking tens of trillions of dollars.
Claims will be tested quickly. C2i expects its first two silicon designs to return from production between April and June, after which the startup plans to validate performance with data center operators and hyperscalers who have requested to review the data, according to Tadeparthy.
The Bengaluru-based startup has built a team of about 65 engineers and is setting up operations for customers in the US and Taiwan as it prepares for an early deployment.
Power delivery is one of the most entrenched parts of the data center stack, long dominated by large incumbents with deep balance sheets and long qualification cycles. While many newer companies focus on improving individual components, reengineering end-to-end power delivery requires coordinating silicon, packaging, and system architecture simultaneously—a capital-intensive approach that few startups attempt and that can take years to validate in a production environment.
Anandan said the real question now is execution, noting that all startups face technology, market and team risks when betting on how industries are evolving. In the case of the C2i, according to him, the feedback should be relatively short. “We’ll know in the next six months,” Anandan said, pointing to upcoming silicon and early customer validation as when the work will be tested.
The bet also reflects how India’s semiconductor design ecosystem has matured in recent years.
“The way you should look at semiconductors in India is that it’s like e-commerce in 2008,” Anandan said. “It’s just getting started.
He pointed to the depth of engineering talent – with a growing proportion of global chip designers based in the country – along with government design incentives that have reduced the cost and risk of tape scrapping, making it increasingly viable for start-ups to manufacture globally competitive semiconductor products from India rather than operating solely as in-house design hubs.
Whether these conditions translate into a globally competitive product will become clearer in the coming months as C2i begins validating its system-level power solutions with customers.