Blackstone & co-investors to enable $1.2 bn fund infusion in AI cloud platform Neysa

Blackstone, the world’s largest alternative asset manager and co-investors have struck definitive agreements to enable a $1.2 bn capital raise in Mumbai headquartered Neysa, an artificial intelligence acceleration cloud platform, according to an announcement on February 16. According to an official statement, “Blackstone and co-investors have provided equity capital of up to $600 million, on the basis of which Neysa intends to secure an additional $600 million of debt financing, subject to documentation. Neysa is a fast-growing platform delivering mission critical solutions to enterprises and government entities and Blackstone will partner with Neysa’s co-founder and chief executive officer, Sharad Sanghi, to accelerate the company’s growth.” Other equity investors in this transaction include TVS Capital, 360 ONE Assets, and Nexus Ventures. Speaking on the transaction, Amit Dixit, Head of Asia Private Equity at Blackstone, said, “Over the past two decades, we have been committed to building businesses that build India, and this investment brings that to life. It reinforces Blackstone’s focus on backing the essential “picks and shovels” of AI globally, including in India, a key market for Blackstone. With our scale, deep expertise, and track record of building market-leading businesses, we believe we are well-positioned to support Neysa’s next phase of growth and the advancement of India’s AI transformation.” “ We are leading the investment and are looking to provide almost up to the full $600 million ourselves and the others have come on top of that. The Neysa platform has very strong customer references. When we did the work, their technical capabilities, customer support and reliability stood out compared to peers,” Ganesh Mani, Senior Managing Director, Blackstone Private Equity told Moneycontrol in an interview, adding that the global investment giant will acquire a majority stake in Neysa on completion of equity. Blackstone which also backs data center platform Lumina CloudInfra is keen to continue to invest in the digital infrastructure space. What about the debt financing aspect of the deal? Mani explains,” Firstly, this will be third-party financing. So, we have enabled this debt through our relationships. Secondly, Neysa has access to this debt subject to final documentation.” When asked about the expansion plans of Neysa and why the firm opted for Blackstone as the lead investor, Sharad Sanghi told Moneycontrol, “ This is a capital-intensive business. Our plan is to deploy more than 20,000 graphic processing units (GPUs) in the near term and well beyond that in the future. Blackstone is the largest data center investor in the world with acquisitions of QTS and AirTrunk. They're also a leading investor in the neocloud space, with investments in CoreWeave and Firmus.” “Plus, they're also very large investors in some of the leading AI frontier labs. Hence, they became the ideal partner, in terms of capital, experience and assured supply chain resiliency from the perspective of allocation of GPUs,” Sanghi added. Founded in 2023, Neysa designs and develops AI systems that are deployed and operated within India. The company provides GPU‑based AI infrastructure that enables enterprises and institutions to train, fine‑tune, and deploy AI workloads. Its customers span across industries, including financial services, technology, healthcare, and public services. DC Advisory served as lead financial advisor to Neysa and KPMG served as a financial advisor to Blackstone, as per the official release. Talwar Thakore & Associates (TT&A) acted as legal advisor to Neysa while Trilegal and Gibson & Dunn acted as legal advisors to Blackstone.