Blackstone just dropped up to $1.2 billion into India's AI infrastructure push, backing little-known startup Neysa in one of the largest compute infrastructure bets in an emerging market. The deal comes as India scrambles to build domestic AI capabilities, with Neysa targeting deployments of more than 20,000 GPUs to meet exploding demand for local compute power. It's a massive vote of confidence in India's tech sovereignty ambitions and signals that the global AI infrastructure race has officially gone multi-polar.
Blackstone is making its biggest bet yet on India's AI ambitions. The private equity giant just committed up to $1.2 billion in financing to Neysa, an Indian AI infrastructure startup most people outside Bangalore have never heard of. But that's about to change.
The deal marks one of the largest single investments in AI compute infrastructure in an emerging market, and it comes at a critical moment. India's been watching the US and China race ahead in AI development, and the government's made it clear that relying on foreign cloud providers isn't a long-term strategy. Data localization mandates, sovereignty concerns, and the sheer cost of shipping data halfway around the world have created a perfect storm of demand for domestic compute.
Neysa's planning to deploy more than 20,000 GPUs over time, according to sources familiar with the plans. That's not Nvidia or Microsoft scale, but it's serious firepower for a regional player. The startup's betting that Indian enterprises, AI labs, and government agencies will pay a premium for local infrastructure that keeps their data onshore and their latency low.
Blackstone's infrastructure team has been quietly building a portfolio of data center and compute assets, but this is their first major move into pure AI infrastructure in Asia. The timing makes sense - GPU shortages have eased somewhat, but access to cutting-edge compute remains a chokepoint for AI development outside the US. By backing Neysa now, Blackstone's positioning itself as the bankroll behind India's AI stack.
