Pipeshift Raises $2.5 Million to Streamline Enterprise AI Deployment

AI Infra Startup Pipeshift Bags $2.5 Mn From Y Combinator

Founded in 2024, Pipeshift is a modular orchestration platform that helps enterprises train, deploy, and scale open-source GenAI models AI infrastructure startup Pipeshift has raised $2.5 Mn (INR 20.74 Cr) in its seed funding round led by Y Combinator and SenseAI Ventures. The round also saw participation from Arka Venture Labs, Good News Ventures, Nivesha Ventures, Astir VC, GradCapital, and MyAsiaVC. Angel investors such as Zuess CEO Kulveer Taggar, Umur Cubukcu of Ubicloud, and Capillary Technologies cofounder Krishna Mehra also participated in the fundraise. The startup reportedly plans to use the fresh proceeds to shore up its product offerings and achieve product-market-fit (PMF) by the end of this year. A chunk of the capital will also be utilised to expand Pipeshift's market presence in the US and India and hire talent. Founded in 2024 by Arko Chattopadhyay, Pranav Reddy and Enrique Ferrao, Pipeshift is a modular orchestration platform that helps enterprises train, deploy, and scale open-source GenAI models. The startup claims that its offerings enable companies to deploy their AI models faster and maximise the production throughput. Its end-to-end MLOps (machine learning operations) stack enables enterprises to bring down their GPU infrastructure costs without any additional engineering efforts. "Enterprises prefer open-source GenAI for the benefits of privacy, model ownership, and lower costs. However, transitioning GenAI to production remains a complex and expensive process, requiring multiple components to be stitched... Pipeshift's enterprise-grade orchestration platform eliminates the need for such extensive engineering investments by not only simplifying deployment but also maximising the production throughput," said SenseAI Ventures managing partner Rahul Agarwalla. Pipeshift claims to work with over 30 companies, including NetApp. The fundraise comes at a time when GenAI mania continues to grip the world. A number of startups have emerged in India over the past few years to offer use cases across sectors and help clients automate and streamline operations. In total, India is home to over 200 GenAI startups that raised more than $1.2 Bn in funding between 2020 and the third quarter (Q3) of 2024. Earlier this month, AI-powered deeptech platform Netradyne entered the unicorn club after raising $90 Mn in its Series D funding round led by existing backer Point72 Private Investments. Prior to that, AI-driven B2B SaaS venture RePut.ai emerged out of stealth mode and raised close to $1 Mn in its pre-seed funding round led by GrowthCap Ventures. Earlier this month, Bengaluru-based agentic AI startup Quash raised about INR 5.4 Cr in its pre-seed funding round led by Arali Ventures.

AI infrastructure startup Pipeshift raises $2.5 million from Y Combinator, others

The funds will be used to enhance the San Francisco and Bengaluru-based company's range of products, reach product market fit, expand market presence in the US and India, and hire talent for its go-to-market initiative.Artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure startup Pipeshift has raised $2.5 million in a seed funding round led by Y Combinator and SenseAI Ventures. Other participants in the round include Arka Venture Labs, Good News Ventures, Nivesha Ventures, Astir VC, GradCapital, and MyAsiaVC, alongside Silicon Valley angels such as Kulveer Taggar (CEO of Zues), Umur Cubukcu (founder of Ubicloud), and Krishna Mehra (AI partner at Elevation Capital). The San Francisco and Bengaluru-based company plans to use the funds to enhance its product offerings and reach product-market fit by the end of this year. The funds will also be directed toward expanding its market presence in the US and India, as well as hiring talent as part of its go-to-market strategy, Arko Chattopadhyay, cofounder and CEO of Pipeshift told ET. Founded in 2024, Pipeshift's modular platform-as-a-service (PaaS) is designed to address the complexity of deploying open-source AI models in enterprise environments. The platform allows companies to train, deploy, and scale generative AI models -- including large language models (LLMs), vision, audio, and image models -- across cloud or on-premises graphics processing units (GPUs). It streamlines the deployment process, reducing the need for extensive engineering hours and enabling enterprises to deploy AI workloads around 30 times more efficiently. This funding round comes at a time when enterprises are increasingly adopting open-source AI models to address unique business challenges while maintaining control over their infrastructure and data. Unlike existing players who act as GPU brokers offering one-size-fits-all solutions, Pipeshift offers a flexible machine learning operations (MLOps) stack. This stack supports various AI strategies, future-proofs infrastructure investments, and lowers GPU infrastructure costs without requiring additional engineering efforts, according to Chattopadhyay. The platform has already been adopted by over 30 companies, including US-based data infrastructure company NetApp. Anu Mangaly, director of software engineering at NetApp, noted that Pipeshift enables the orchestration of existing GPUs to deliver over 500 tokens per second for models like Llama 3.1 8B without the need for compression or quantisation. "Enterprises prefer open-source GenAI for the benefits of privacy, model ownership, and lower costs. However, transitioning GenAI to production remains a complex and expensive process requiring multiple components to be stitched," said Rahul Agarwalla, managing partner of SenseAI Ventures.