Agrani Labs, an AI semiconductor startup founded by distinguished veterans from Intel and AMD, publicly launches today after operating in stealth. The company also announces the successful close of an $8 million seed financing round led by Peak XV Partners, with participation from angel investors.
Agrani Labs is one of the most ambitious deep-tech ventures to emerge from India’s startup ecosystem. This effort represents a major step toward establishing India as a credible innovator in advanced semiconductor design and compute infrastructure at a time when the global GPU market is expanding rapidly.
The demand for AI datacentre silicon is projected to skyrocket from $207 billion in 2025 to over $1 trillion annually by 2030. Yet, the market remains heavily concentrated. Agrani Labs aims to change this with a grounds-up high-performance AI GPU design.
Agrani is not just building hardware. The team is developing a full-stack solution, including end-to-end software comprising AI frameworks, compilers, libraries, system software, addressing one of the primary bottlenecks in non-incumbent AI chip adoption.
“We are excited to emerge from stealth,” said Dheemanth Nagaraj, Co-founder & CEO of Agrani Labs. “AI is by far the most impactful technology inflection in the last century. For a team that has lived and breathed compute architecture for decades, building an AI computer grounds-up to help advance the potential of this technology is gratifying. We are leveraging India’s immense semiconductor and software talent to build a product that will compete on the global stage”
“Accelerated compute silicon (GPUs) is one of the most attractive and strategic markets globally. Agrani’s founders bring a rare mix of architectural judgment, delivery discipline, and hard-earned experience – qualities essential to tackling a challenge of this scale. We’re excited to partner with them as they aspire to build one of the world’s leading fabless semiconductor companies, from India.” said Ashish Agrawal, MD Peak XV Partners.
Agrani’s founding team brings over 100 years of combined experience in high-performance datacentre product design from Intel and AMD.
CEO Dheemanth Nagaraj is a former Intel Fellow – the first from Intel’s India Design Centre to hold that title – and a former Senior Fellow at AMD. Co-founders Ashok Jagannathan, Chief Architect (former Senior Principal Engineer at Intel), Srikanth Nimmagadda, Chief Chip Technologist (former Senior Principal Engineer at Intel), and Rajesh Vivekanandham, Chief Performance Engineer (former Principal Engineer at AMD, Intel) round out a team that has collectively designed and shipped processors powering datacentres globally, generating multi-billion dollars in revenue.
Beyond the founders, Agrani has assembled a world-class team spanning experienced technologists from top multinationals and young graduates from India’s leading institutions.
Agrani also counts Vinod Dham, internationally recognized as the “Father of the Pentium” for his pioneering work at Intel and a major figure in the global semiconductor community, as a founding advisor. Dham’s guidance adds strategic depth to Agrani’s mission at a time when India’s semiconductor ambitions are intensifying globally.
“What excites me about Agrani Labs is the clarity of architectural thinking and the disciplined execution they apply to one of today’s most consequential technological challenges. Building competitive AI compute platforms is extraordinarily difficult. Agrani’s founders possess a rare depth of experience, technical rigor, and long-term ambition—the exact ingredients required to pioneer globally relevant semiconductor innovation from India. I am delighted to support them on this journey”, said Vinod Dham, Founding Advisor, Agrani Labs.
Since inception, the company has made rapid progress in architecture and product definition and has built early versions of its hardware and software stack. The company is also actively collaborating with global academic institutions, semiconductor partners, government research organizations, and deep-tech software ecosystems to accelerate product development.
