LightSpeedAI Labs Pvt Ltd, a photonics and computing startup, on Tuesday said it has raised a new funding round led by early-stage investors YourNest Venture Capital and growX Ventures.
The company will use the fresh capital to build and deploy its product, LightCompute, said LightSpeedAI in a statement without disclosing the funding amount.
LightCompute is an optoelectronic processor for accelerating artificial intelligence and high-performance computing applications.
LightSpeedAI was founded last year by Rohin Y and PV Ramana. This is not Rohin Y's first stint at entrepreneurship. Rohin Y, a graduate of Birla Institute of Technology and Science, had earlier founded R&D Chief, a research and development company dealing in design and electronics, according to his LinkedIn profile.
PV Ramana, who completed his graduation in science in the early 1980s, started his career as a scientist at Defence Research and Development Organisation. Later, he also worked at Philips and, in the most recent stint before launching the startup, he was professor director at Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Technology in Hyderabad.
Prior to this funding, LightSpeedAI had raised pre-seed funding from Entrepreneur First in the middle of last year. Entrepreneur First, a London-based organisation that helps individuals build companies from scratch, entered India last year.
After this, it had joined the cohort of Semiconductor Fabless Accelerator Lab, an initiative of the Karnataka state government and industry body India Electronics and Semiconductor Association.
Investors
YourNest is currently investing from its second fund of $45 million which is yet to formally make the final close. Sunil Goyal, managing director, YourNest, recently told VCCircle that the new fund had received most commitments by December last year and its focus now is to deploy the capital.
The second fund has invested in at least seven companies so far. These include edtech startup 3RDFlix Visual Effects Pvt. Ltd and networking platform Lavelle Networks.
In June, YourNest struck stellar returns from its six-year-old investment in Uniphore Software Systems Pvt. Ltd.
growX is a B2B and deep-tech focused early-stage venture fund. It has invested in over 35 companies such as Fynd, Locus, Mad Street Den, Pixxel, Progcap, Wellthy, and Zipolan.
