Power, not compute, is rapidly becoming the limiting factor in AI data center expansion. This change led Peak XV Partners to back C2i Semiconductors, an Indian startup building plug-and-play system-level power solutions designed to reduce energy losses and improve the economics of large-scale AI infrastructure.
C2i (short for Control Transformation 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.
This investment comes as data center energy demand accelerates around the world. Data center power consumption is expected to nearly triple by 2035, according to a December 2025 report from BloombergNEF, while Goldman Sachs Research estimates data center power demand could jump 175% from 2023 levels by 2030, the equivalent of adding another top 10 power-consuming country.
Much of that load comes not from power generation, but from efficient conversion within the data center, where high-voltage power must be stepped down thousands of times before reaching the GPU. Preetam Taderathy, co-founder and CTO of C2i, said in an interview that this process currently wastes about 15-20% of energy.
“Voltages that used to be 400 volts are already moving to 800 volts and will probably go even higher,” Tadesh told TechCrunch.
Founded in 2024 by former Texas Instruments power executives Ram Ananth, Vikram Gakar, Pritam Tadesh, and Dattatreya Suryanarayana, along with Harsha S.B. and Muthusbramanian N.V., C2i is redesigning power delivery as a single plug-and-play “grid-to-GPU” system that spans from the data center bus to the processor itself.
C2i estimates that by treating power conversion, control, and packaging as an integrated platform, end-to-end losses can be reduced by approximately 10% (approximately 100 kilowatts saved for every megawatt consumed), with ripple effects on cooling costs, GPU utilization, and overall data center economics.
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“All of this translates directly to total cost of ownership, revenue and profitability,” says Tadesh.
For Peak XV Partners (separated from Sequoia Capital in 2023), the appeal lies in how power costs shape the economics of large-scale AI infrastructure. Rajan Anandan, the venture’s managing director, told TechCrunch that after the upfront investment in servers and equipment, energy costs make up the bulk of a data center’s ongoing expenses, so even incremental efficiency gains can be very valuable.
“If you can reduce energy costs by 10 to 30 percent, that’s a huge number,” Anandan said. “You’re talking tens of billions of dollars.”
The claim will be verified soon. C2i expects the first two silicon designs to return from manufacturing between April and June, Tadesh said, and then plans to validate performance with data center operators and hyperscalers who have asked to review their data.
The Bangalore-based startup has assembled a team of around 65 engineers and is setting up customer-facing operations in the US and Taiwan in preparation for initial implementation.
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 certification cycles. While many startups focus on improving individual components, end-to-end redesign of power delivery requires simultaneous alignment of silicon, packaging, and system architecture. It’s a capital-intensive approach that few startups try, and it takes years to demonstrate in production.
The real issue now is execution, Anandan said, noting that all startups face technology, market and team risks when betting on how the industry will evolve. For C2i, the feedback loop must be relatively short, he said. “We’ll know within the next six months,” Anandan said, pointing to upcoming silicon and early customer validation as moments when the thesis will be put to the test.
The bet reflects how India’s semiconductor design ecosystem has matured in recent years.
“The way you look at semiconductors in India is like e-commerce in 2008,” Anandan said. “It’s just the beginning.”
He noted that the depth of engineering talent, with an increasing proportion of global chip designers based in India, and government-backed design-related incentives that lower tape-out costs and risks, make it increasingly viable for startups to build globally competitive semiconductor products from India rather than operating solely as captive design centers.
Whether these conditions will translate into a globally competitive product will become clearer in the coming months as C2i begins validating system-level power solutions with customers.
