Netris secures $15M from a16z to accelerate AI cloud deployment

Launching a data center has become a race against time for emerging neocloud providers. While giants like AWS and Google built proprietary automation tools to handle network configuration and multi-tenancy, smaller operators lack the massive engineering teams required to replicate these systems. Netris fills this gap by offering vendor-agnostic software that runs directly on network switches, automating the setup process and ensuring traffic remains hardware-accelerated to keep pace with the massive demands of AI workloads.

CEO Alex Saroyan notes that traditional software-defined networking often fails under the weight of AI traffic, necessitating a more robust, hardware-centric approach. The company’s technology is already operational across more than 35 GPU clusters globally, managing roughly one million GPUs for clients including Foxconn, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Lightning AI. Despite the current industry frenzy, Saroyan maintains that the platform relies on deterministic, repeatable algorithms rather than generative AI, prioritizing reliability for critical infrastructure. With a16z partner Guido Appenzeller joining the board, Netris plans to expand its engineering team and broaden its hardware support to capture a larger share of the burgeoning AI infrastructure market.