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Upscale AI, a Santa Clara startup, raised $190 million（約300億円） in Series A-1 funding, bringing total funding to $500 million（約800億円） and valuation to $2 billion（約3200億円） in under 18 months. The round was led by Premji Invest and included new investors Nvidia, Salesforce Ventures, Temasek, and Seligman Ventures.
Why it matters
The company is solving a real constraint: GPUs from different manufacturers currently cannot communicate efficiently with each other, forcing customers into single-vendor ecosystems. Spending on AI data center switches is forecasted to surpass $100 billion（約16兆円） annually by 2030, and the five largest tech companies will spend roughly $660 billion（約110兆円） to $690 billion（約110兆円） on infrastructure in 2026 alone—nearly doubling what they spent in 2025. This scale of investment means infrastructure software and hardware that can break vendor lock-in has enormous commercial potential.
What to watch
Competitive pressure is mounting. Nexthop AI, a direct rival, closed a $500 million（約800億円） Series B round in March at a $4.2 billion（約6700億円） valuation. Upscale must also prove that the open networking standard it is building on—backed by AMD, Intel, Google, Meta, Microsoft, and 80+ other companies—can match Nvidia's proprietary performance in real-world AI training.
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