C2i Semiconductors raises $15M to tackle AI data center power waste

Indian startup C2i Semiconductors has raised $15 million in a Series A funding round led by Peak XV Partners, bringing the company’s total funding to $19 million. The round also included participation from investors Yali Deeptech and TDK Ventures. Founded in 2024 by former Texas Instruments employees, C2i is developing integrated power delivery systems to address the growing energy bottleneck in artificial intelligence infrastructure.

Power is fast becoming the limiting factor in scaling AI data centers worldwide. According to a December 2025 report from BloombergNEF, electricity consumption from data centers is projected to nearly triple by 2035. Additionally, Goldman Sachs Research estimates that data-center power demand could surge 175% by 2030 from 2023 levels. Much of this strain occurs during power conversion inside facilities, where high-voltage electricity must be stepped down to power processors. Current systems waste about 15% to 20% of energy during this conversion process.

To address this waste, C2i is designing a single, integrated “grid-to-GPU” system—which manages end-to-end power delivery from the electrical grid directly to the processor. The startup estimates this approach can cut end-to-end losses by around 10%, which translates to roughly 100 kilowatts saved for every one megawatt consumed. According to co-founder and CTO Preetam Tadeparthy, voltage standards are shifting rapidly, noting that systems have already transitioned from 400 volts to 800 volts and will likely go higher. The startup expects its first two silicon designs to return from fabrication between April and June, after which it plans to validate performance with large-scale cloud providers, often called hyperscalers, in the U.S. and Taiwan. C2i currently employs about 65 engineers.

For Peak XV Partners, which split from Sequoia Capital in 2023, the investment represents a broader bet on the maturation of India’s semiconductor design ecosystem. Rajan Anandan, managing director at Peak XV Partners, noted that reducing energy costs by, call it, 10 to 30% represents a massive financial impact, potentially saving tens of billions of dollars across the industry. He views the country’s chip sector as being in its infancy, aided by government-backed design-linked incentives that lower the cost and risk of tape-outs—the final stage of chip design before manufacturing. “The way you should look at semiconductors in India is, this is like 2008 e-commerce,” Anandan said.

Why it matters

Power constraints are fast becoming the primary bottleneck for scaling AI infrastructure. By redesigning power delivery as an integrated, plug-and-play system, C2i is attempting to improve both the energy efficiency and the overall economics of large-scale data centers.