Blackstone takes majority stake in Indian AI startup Neysa

Neysa, an Indian AI infrastructure startup founded in 2023, has secured backing from U.S. private equity firm Blackstone to scale domestic compute capacity in India. Under the agreement, Blackstone and co-investors—including Teachers’ Venture Growth, TVS Capital, 360 ONE Asset, and Nexus Venture Partners—will provide primary equity, giving Blackstone a majority stake in the company. The total financing package is planned to reach up to $1.2 billion, representing a significant increase from the startup’s previous $50 million funding.

The funding structure consists of:

• Up to $600 million in primary equity investment.
• An additional $600 million in planned debt financing.

The investment addresses a critical infrastructure gap in India. According to Ganesh Mani, a senior managing director at Blackstone Private Equity, India currently has fewer than 60,000 GPUs deployed. However, Mani expects the country to scale its GPU capacity nearly 30x to more than 2 million units in the coming years. Neysa operates as a “neo-cloud”—an AI-focused infrastructure provider offering dedicated GPU capacity—to meet this demand. By offering “GPU-first” infrastructure (prioritized for Graphics Processing Units), Neysa aims to distinguish itself from traditional “hyperscalers” (large-scale cloud providers).

“A lot of customers want handholding, and a lot of them want round-the-clock support with a 15-minute response and a couple of our resolutions. And so those are the kinds of things that we provide that some of the hyperscalers don’t,” said Sharad Sanghi, Neysa co-founder and CEO.

The Mumbai-headquartered startup, which currently employs 110 people, plans to use the bulk of the new capital to deploy large-scale GPU clusters, including compute, networking, and storage. A smaller portion of the funds will go toward research and development and building out its software platforms for orchestration, observability, and security. Neysa currently has about 1,200 GPUs live and targets deployments of more than 20,000 GPUs over time. Driven by this expansion, the company aims to more than triple its revenue next year. Sanghi noted that some advanced-stage conversations could accelerate this timeline, potentially bringing the capacity online within the next nine months.

For Blackstone, the transaction aligns with its broader global strategy of investing in data center and AI infrastructure. The private equity firm has previously backed large-scale data center platforms such as QTS and AirTrunk, as well as specialized AI infrastructure providers, including CoreWeave in the U.S. and Firmus in Australia.

Why it matters

The deal supports Neysa’s expansion of domestic compute capacity in India, addressing the surge in demand for AI computing and supply constraints for specialized chips.