Lightspeed (Lightspeed Ventures, LLC) has entered the fray to pick up a stake in cloud infrastructure startup Neysa (Neysa Networks Private Limited), joining Japanese investor SoftBank Group Corp. (TSE:9984) and private equity firm Blackstone Inc. (NYSE:BX), which have already been in talks, according to people in the know. While Blackstone is negotiating a buyout of Neysa, Lightspeed, much like SoftBank, is discussing picking up a $40-50 million minority stake in the Z47 and Nexus Venture Partners-backed startup.
"Blackstone wants to buy a majority stake in Neysa, while SoftBank and Lightspeed are discussing a minority investment that is expected to value the company at around $250-300 million," said one of the persons, who did not wish to be identified. "These are all early-stage negotiations. "The $250-300 million valuation will mark a significant jump in valuation for the startup, which was last valued at around $76 million during its October 2024 funding round.
The company raised $50 million in funding across two rounds in 2024 from Nexus Venture Partners, Z47, Blume Ventures and NTTVC."Indian founders are going all-in on the application layer of AI, but very few are taking on the infrastructure layer because of its capital-intensive nature. it needs land, power and deep technical talent, and that's not an easy mix for most startups," said a technology investor. "That's why we're seeing many entrepreneurs from India building software and enterprise tools instead.
Neysa's founding team, though, has already built at that scale with Netmagic, which makes them stand out in the sense that they actually know how to pull off AI infrastructure in India." Neysa did not respond to ET's queries till press time. Emails sent to Lightspeed and SoftBank also went unanswered. Blackstone declined to comment.
The negotiations for a stake in Neysa signal increasing investor interest in Indian alternatives to hyperscalers.
