CCI Clears Blackstone’s Investment In AI Cloud Startup Neysa

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has approved Blackstone-led acquisition of a controlling stake in AI cloud startup Neysa Networks.

According to a release issued by the regulator today, Blackstocne will make the investment through its affiliates BCP Asia II Topco V and Asia II Topco XIV.

Apart from Blackstone, several other investors will also acquire stakes in Neysa as part of the transaction. These investors include 360 ONE Asset, TVS Capital, Nexus Ventures, Anchorage Capital Scheme III, Neysa founder and CEO Sharad Sanghi, and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Fund. 

The approval comes months after Neysa announced that it had entered a definitive agreement to raise $600 Mn in equity funding in a round led by Blackstone. Besides the equity investment, Neysa was also set to raise another $600 Mn through debt financing, taking the total planned round size to $1.2 Bn at a reported enterprise valuation of $1.4 Bn.

With the CCI approval in place, the transaction officially marks one of the largest funding rounds raised by an AI-native startup in India.

Founded in 2023 by Sharad Sanghi and Anindya Das, Neysa offers GPU-led cloud and AI infrastructure services to enterprises, startups and public sector organisations. The startup focuses on enabling customers to train, customise and deploy AI workloads at scale.

The startup plans to use the fresh capital to deploy more than 20,000 GPUs in India as it expands its AI cloud infrastructure network. Its customers span sectors such as financial services, healthcare, public services and technology startups.

Prior to this transaction, Neysa had raised about $50 Mn from investors including Nexus Venture Partners, Z47 and NTT Venture Capital.

Blackstone’s bet on Neysa comes amid a broader surge in large AI infrastructure and sovereign AI investments in India, as investors race to back GPU cloud, foundation model and AI compute startups.

Earlier this year, Indian AI startup Sarvam AI reportedly began raising $250 Mn at a valuation of about $1.5 Bn, with investors including Nvidia, Accel and HCLTech said to be in talks to participate.

Separately, Yotta Data Services announced plans to invest more than $2 Bn to build one of Asia’s largest AI superclusters using Nvidia Blackwell Ultra GPUs. The company said it plans to deploy over 20,000 GPUs across its facilities in Greater Noida and Navi Mumbai.

Yotta also expanded its partnership with Gorilla Technology in April this year, scaling the collaboration to a reported $2.8 Bn AI infrastructure deployment involving more than 20,000 GPUs.

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