Netris Secures $15M Series A for AI Infrastructure Network Automation

A network automation startup called Netris has raised $15 million in a Series A funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), marking a significant milestone for the company's efforts to simplify and accelerate the deployment of AI infrastructure. The investment follows 800% annual recurring revenue growth and over 35 live deployments at GPU clusters around the world, including operations run by major players like Lightning AI, Foxconn-backed Visionbay, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, TensorWave, and Telus.

What Happened

Netris, a Santa Clara-based startup founded in 2018, has developed a platform that automates the networking layer inside GPU data centers. The company's software runs on network switches and provides network abstraction, allowing hardware configurations to be changed as required, and isolating servers and resources at the hardware layer for multi-tenancy. This approach is designed to address the complexity of managing multiple vendors' AI cloud networks, abstracting diverse fabrics, and ensuring secure multi-tenancy.

The problem Netris addresses is not the one that gets the most attention in the AI infrastructure boom. While many companies have raised billions of dollars to buy GPUs and build data centers, getting those facilities operational requires configuring the network fabric that connects thousands of servers – a process that can take months and leave expensive hardware sitting idle. A single GPU server carries at least three north-south connections, 16 east-west connections, and four NVL72 links, according to Netris.

Background and Context

The AI boom has encouraged everyone and their uncle to launch a data center business. But spinning up a data center isn't easy. Even if you solve the problem of securing the GPUs, network switches, and storage, you still have to get everything configured, running, and be able to cater to customers' various needs. Getting a data center ready to provide cloud-computing services specifically for AI inference and training services can take months of work.

Netris CEO Alex Saroyan told TechCrunch that traditional software-defined networking falls short for AI workloads because the volume of traffic requires everything to be hardware-accelerated. "For AI, software is not okay, because the amount of traffic is so high, everything must be hardware accelerated," he said. Netris has been building hardware-accelerated network automation for eight years.

Why It Matters

The investment in Netris by a16z highlights the growing need for AI network automation. The company's platform is now live at more than 35 GPU clusters, totaling roughly one million GPUs. The neocloud sector has seen a wave of funding in recent months, with companies like Runpod reaching billion-dollar valuations on the strength of the AI compute shortage. Netris occupies a different layer of the stack, selling the infrastructure software those GPU cloud operators need rather than competing with them for compute customers.

Guido Appenzeller, a partner at a16z who previously co-founded Big Switch Networks and served as CTO at VMware's Cloud and Networking division, led the round and is joining the Netris board. "GPU clusters run across many fabrics at once, and legacy automation was never built for that," Appenzeller said, calling Netris the platform that AI cloud operators are standardizing on.

What Comes Next

The funding will be used to hire engineers and sales staff, add support for more hardware vendors, and expand the functionality of its automation platform. Netris plans to continue building an extensive ecosystem of partners, including major players like NVIDIA, Mirantis, Rafay, Red Hat, Spectro Cloud, vCluster, and AI platform providers like HPE.

Key Facts

• Netris raised $15 million in a Series A funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).
• The company has experienced 800% annual recurring revenue growth over the last year.
• Netris' platform is now live at more than 35 GPU clusters, totaling roughly one million GPUs.
• The neocloud sector has seen a wave of funding in recent months, with companies like Runpod reaching billion-dollar valuations on the strength of the AI compute shortage.
• Netris' platform is designed to address the complexity of managing multiple vendors' AI cloud networks, abstracting diverse fabrics, and ensuring secure multi-tenancy.