Upscale AI, a new high‑performance AI networking company, has announced its launch with over $100 million in seed funding. Upscale AI is pioneering open-standard networking technology to drive faster innovation along with greater choice and flexibility across AI infrastructure. Led by industry veterans from Palo Alto Networks, Marvell, Cisco, and Google, Upscale AI is introducing sustainable, ultra-low latency network infrastructure solutions purpose-built for AI, interconnecting compute, data, and users.
Upscale AI is pioneering open-standard networking technology to drive faster innovation along with greater choice and flexibility across AI infrastructure, enabling true bring-your-own-compute flexibility while defining the future of scalable, interoperable AI networking. Upscale AI’s portfolio is built on SONiC, Ultra Accelerator Link (UAL), Ultra Ethernet (UE), Switch Abstraction Interface (SAI), and other cutting-edge open source technologies and open standards. The Upscale AI team also actively participates in the Ultra Ethernet Consortium (UEC), Ultra Accelerator Link (UAL), Open Compute Project (OCP), and SONiC Foundation to advance AI networking innovation.
The seed round was co-led by Mayfield and Maverick Silicon and included participation from StepStone Group, Celesta Capital, Xora, Qualcomm Ventures, Cota Capital, MVP Ventures, and Stanford University. Upscale AI was incubated by Auradine, a rapidly growing infrastructure player in the blockchain and AI compute space. Upscale AI is launching a next‑generation AI suite of networking solutions that delivers high‑performance connectivity for specialized compute, accelerating AI democratization with open‑standard and full‑stack turnkey solutions.
The founders of Upscale AI were serial entrepreneurs Barun Kar, the CEO, and Rajiv Khemani, the Executive Chairman, with more than 100 influential technologists on staff. Kar and Khemani bring a strong history of success, having co-founded and led ventures like Palo Alto Networks, Innovium, and Cavium, the latter of which was acquired by Marvell. The team’s extensive experience spans decades in silicon, systems, and software, with members hailing from leading infrastructure companies such as Marvell, Broadcom, Intel, Cisco, AWS, Microsoft, Google, Palo Alto Networks, and Juniper Networks.
“From enterprise networking to building cloud infrastructure, Upscale AI’s team has been at the centre of every major computing shift over the past 20 years,” Kar said. “Now, our world-class team is applying its depth and breadth of expertise to the next frontier: open AI-native infrastructure. Our deep expertise enables us to architect cohesive AI infrastructure solutions, partnering with leading xPU vendors and AI innovators to meet today’s demands and power what’s next.”
“With over $100 million in funding, we’re taking this deep industry expertise to the next frontier: open AI-native infrastructure,” Kar stated.
Upscale AI, which was incubated by Auradine, will now operate independently to focus on developing a full stack of AI network infrastructure solutions built using open standards.
“I am serving as CEO of Upscale AI to make our vision of democratizing AI network infrastructure a reality,” Kar indicated. “Our deep expertise enables us to architect cohesive AI infrastructure solutions, partnering with leading xPU vendors and AI innovators to meet today’s demands and power what’s next.”
AI’s exponential growth has outpaced general-purpose compute and traditional networks, opening up an over $20 billion AI networking market. Realizing AI’s potential requires a full-stack redesign: specialized xPU clusters, ultra-low latency interconnects, and secure and power-efficient infrastructure to connect massive heterogeneous compute deployments at unprecedented speed. Upscale AI aims to meet this demand by designing robust silicon, systems, and software for ultra-low latency networking, enabling breakthrough performance and scalability for AI training, inference, generative AI, edge computing, and cloud-scale deployments.
“We incubated Upscale AI with a bold vision to reimagine networking for the AI era anchored in openness, performance, and scale,” said Rajiv Khemani, Executive Chairman of Upscale AI and CEO of Auradine. “As AI transforms every industry, next-generation infrastructure must keep pace. Upscale AI’s world-class team is building the foundational layer that will enable AI to reach its full potential.”
This foundational layer is of critical importance.
“Upscale AI is reimagining networking for the AI era from the ground up with open standards, performance, sustainability and scale at the core,” Khemani said. “I would like to thank all Upscale AI’s investors, including Mayfield and Maverick Silicon, our incredible founding team and 100+ technologists who are helping us usher in a new wave of high-performance AI networking technology built on open standards.
“I will maintain my role as CEO of Auradine, which incubated Upscale AI, while also serving as Executive Chairman at Upscale AI & being actively involved,” Khemani continued. “I look forward to sharing more updates as Upscale AI works to define the future of scalable, interoperable networking.”
Upscale AI is rapidly developing full stack AI networking infrastructure. The product suite will focus on xPU maximization and connectivity, and will include AI Network Fabrics, which has ultra-low latency and high bandwidth networking fabric to drive the best xPU performance and an unprecedented reduction in total cost of ownership (TCO) at the data centre level.
“Upscale AI is a welcome addition to the UA Link ecosystem, and their open standards-based AI Network Fabric will support customers’ design acceleration and bring AI-powered solutions to market faster,” said Robert Hormuth, Corporate Vice President, Architecture and Strategy, Data Center Solutions Group, AMD. “The future of AI will not be built by any one company or in a closed ecosystem; it will require open standards and committed partners.”
Upscale AI also comes with a hardened, production-ready SAI/SONiC with enhanced operationality allowing for scale, in-service network upgrades, and improved functionality to maximize uptime.
“Upscale AI is reimagining the entire AI networking stack, starting with scale-up solutions based on open standards that break free from proprietary systems,” said Navin Chaddha, Managing Partner of Mayfield. “We’re excited to continue our partnership with Barun and Rajiv for the third time, along with their world-class team, as they set out to build a category-defining networking company for the AI era.”
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“We’re witnessing a fundamental transformation in networking as traditional approaches cannot keep pace with AI’s exponential demands,” Chaddha commented.
“Upscale AI’s open standards approach is shaping the critical networking layer for the GenAI era,” said Andrew Homan, Managing Partner at Maverick Silicon. “By unifying performance, scalability, and interoperability, Upscale AI is uniquely positioned to solve today’s AI networking bottlenecks while laying the groundwork for the next generation of distributed, large-scale AI systems.”