Lightspeed Venture Partners leads funding round for pioneering networking solutions to enable massive growth in cloud deployments

SANTA CLARA, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Nexthop AI, the company building the next generation of artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure for the world’s largest cloud companies, launched from stealth today with $110 million in funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. Additional investors include Kleiner Perkins, WestBridge Capital, Battery Ventures and Emergent Ventures. This funding will accelerate the development of Nexthop AI’s pioneering networking solutions for cloud and hyperscale AI clusters.

To facilitate the staggering scale requirements of AI training and inference, hyperscalers are spending billions in evolving their GPU and networking deployments with upwards of two gigawatts of capacity annually. These companies also require highly optimized hardware and software infrastructure tunable for datacenter build outs.

“The world’s largest cloud providers need a new generation of networking capabilities to keep pace with the demands of AI workloads,” said Guru Chahal, partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners. “Nexthop AI is filling a critical gap in this $35 billion market with its deep domain expertise, pioneering technology and customized solutions, positioning the company as the go-to partner for leading cloud providers, seeking to seize the AI revolution.”

Nexthop AI specializes in building custom networking solutions for the hyperscalers, which integrate seamlessly into their optimized cloud-stack. This includes building networking hardware designed to each customer’s specifications, a network operating system of their choice hardened by Nexthop AI, along with pre-tested optical and electrical interconnects from the customer’s diverse supply chain.

“Hyperscalers need the ecosystem to innovate with them to accelerate their infrastructure deployments,” said Anshul Sadana, CEO of Nexthop AI. “Nexthop AI is a force-multiplier, as it partners with and works as an extension of the cloud companies’ engineering teams. This disruptive model enables cloud companies to build the most cost and power efficient AI solutions.”

The network has historically played a critical role in underpinning each wave of technology innovation, including mainframe to PC, client-server to cloud and now the AI wave. Nexthop AI’s sophisticated products, working seamlessly with open source Network Operating Systems, such as SONiC, provide the agility and customization needed by the hyperscalers. Their overarching expertise in hardware, software, photonics and network architecture enables highly optimized platforms for world class AI infrastructure.

About Nexthop AI

Nexthop AI is a cohesive team of seasoned industry experts, who through their collaborative product design as well as system and network engineering capabilities are leading the charge on disruptive technical innovation for AI and Cloud networking. Nexthop AI is headquartered in Santa Clara with additional locations in Seattle, Vancouver and Bengaluru, India. https://nexthop.ai

About Lightspeed

Lightspeed Venture Partners is a multi-stage venture capital firm focused on accelerating disruptive innovations and trends in the Enterprise, Consumer, Health, and Fintech sectors. Over the past 25 years, the Lightspeed team has backed hundreds of entrepreneurs and helped build more than 500 companies globally including Abridge, Affirm, Anthropic, Cato Networks, Epic Games, Glean, Mistral, Moveworks, Navan, Netskope, Rubrik, Snap, Wiz, and more. Lightspeed and its global team currently manage $30B in AUM across the Lightspeed platform, with investment professionals and advisors in the U.S., Europe, India, Israel, and Southeast Asia. www.lsvp.com

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