Power, rather than compute, is quickly becoming the limiting factor in scaling AI data centers. This change prompted Peak XV Partners to support C2i Semiconductorsan Indian startup that creates plug-and-play system-level power solutions designed to reduce power losses and improve the economics of large-scale AI infrastructure.
C2i (which stands for Control Conversion and Intelligence) 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. The power consumption of data centers is expected to almost triple by 2035according to a December 2025 report from BloombergNEF, while Goldman Sachs Research estimates data center energy demand could increase by 175% by 2030 compared to 2023 levels – the equivalent of adding another country among the top 10 energy consumers.
Much of this pressure comes not from generating electricity but from converting it efficiently in data centers, where high-voltage power must be reduced thousands of times before reaching GPUs. This process currently wastes about 15 to 20 percent energy, C2i co-founder and CTO Preetam Tadeparthy said in an interview.
“What used to be 400 volts has already increased to 800 volts and will probably increase,” 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 Muthusubramanian N. V, C2i reimagines power delivery as a single, plug-and-play “grid to GPU” system spanning the data center bus to the processor itself.
By treating power conversion, control and packaging as an integrated platform, C2i estimates it can reduce end-to-end losses by approximately 10% – approximately 100 kilowatts saved for every megawatt consumed – with implications for 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,” Tadeparthy said.
For Peak XV partners (who separation of Sequoia Capital in 2023), the appeal lies in how energy costs shape the economics of large-scale AI infrastructure. Rajan Anandan, managing director at the venture capital firm, told TechCrunch that after the initial investment in servers and facilities, energy costs become the largest ongoing expense for data centers, making even incremental efficiency gains very valuable.
“If you can reduce energy costs by, let’s call it, 10 to 30 percent, that’s a huge number,” Anandan said. “You’re talking tens of billions of dollars.”
Claims will be tested promptly. C2i expects its first two silicon designs to return from manufacturing 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 Bangalore-based startup has built a team of around 65 engineers and is setting up customer-facing operations in the US and Taiwan as it prepares for initial deployments.
Power delivery is one of the most entrenched elements of the data center stack, long dominated by large incumbents with strong balance sheets and multi-year qualification cycles. While many newer companies focus on improving individual components, overhauling end-to-end power delivery requires coordinating the silicon, package, and system architecture simultaneously — a capital-intensive approach that few startups attempt and which can take years to prove in production environments.
Anandan said the real question now is execution, noting that all startups face technology, market and team risks when betting on how industries evolve. In the case of C2i, he says, the feedback loop should be relatively short. “We’ll know in the next six months,” Anandan said, pointing to the next silicon and early customer validation as when the thesis will be tested.
This bet also reflects the maturity of the Indian semiconductor design ecosystem in recent years.
“The way you should look at semiconductors in India is: It’s like e-commerce in 2008,” Anandan said. “It’s just getting started.”
He highlighted the breadth of engineering talent – with a growing share of global chip designers based in the country – as well as government-backed design incentives that have reduced the cost and risk of registrations, making 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 over the coming months as C2i begins to validate its system-level power solutions with customers.
