GP at @CelestaCapital. All things VC, deep tech, AI, quantum, and the otherwise geeky. Host @techsurgepod.
Silicon Valley
Joined March 2008
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Sriram Viswanathan retweeted
Big congrats to portfolio company @TonboImaging on its IPO listing today on @NSEIndia and @BSEIndia! 👏
We first led its Series B in 2017. Today, 28,000+ Tonbo systems are now deployed across 24 countries.
Congrats to CEO Arvind Lakshmikumar and the Tonbo team!
Sriram Viswanathan retweeted
Congrats to Celesta portco @parkour_sc on acquiring @quarticai! 🚀
Together, their platform offers one complete view of the life sciences lifecycle, tracking drugs and vaccines from clinical dev't to plant, through point of care.
More 👉 prweb.com/releases/parkoursc…
Sriram Viswanathan retweeted
Every gigawatt of AI infrastructure costs $50–60 billion in the West. China's target? Under $10 billion. New episode of TechSurge: gaming chip legend @RajaXg (Founder & CEO,@realoxmiqlabs) joins host @dgoldman627
Sriram Viswanathan retweeted
Today on TITV:
-Oura postpones IPO, citing “uncertainty” in IPO market | @mvpeers
-AMD to buy Fei-Fei Li’s World Labs for $8.2B | @1sriram, Founding Managing Partner at Celesta Capital
-Anthropic cuts AI discounts after usage caps | @LauraBratton5
-Anthropic Claude Sonent 5.5 & OpenAI’s GPT-6.1 Astra update | @RayanKrishnan
-Booking Holdings launches Lola AI assistant | @shafner, CEO and Co-Founder of Lola
The Information | TITV | September 29, 2026 nitter.cf/i/broadcasts/1MJgNbOmz…
It was an honor to join the CXO Roundtable with Prime Minister @narendramodi during Semicon India 2026, and to engage with Union Minister for Electronics & IT @AshwiniVaishnaw @SecretaryMEITY @SemiconIndia CEO Amitesh Sinha across the week.
Semicon India delivered another splendid event. Each year the progress is more tangible: fabs and assembly plants under construction, global suppliers arriving, and a policy architecture, from Semicon India 2.0 to the RDI Scheme and the Deep Tech Fund of Funds, that few countries can match.
I also had the opportunity to present on where global deep tech capital is flowing. India now stands second in the world by number of deep tech companies, yet attracted under $2B in deep tech funding last year against $147B in the United States. That gap is the opportunity, and it is why we helped launch the India Deep Tech Alliance at Semicon India 2025.
One year on, IDTA arrived at Semicon India with three announcements. Members invested more than ₹2,170 crore across 56 deep tech companies in the Alliance's first year. At Semicon, IDTA released India's Semiconductor Opportunity report, and announced its partnership with SEMI to launch the India Semiconductor Academy, a national platform for semiconductor skills and employment. Alliance members have committed more than $3B over five years, including $1B for AI.
We at @CelestaCapital are solidly behind the strategic objective the Indian government has laid out. Building semiconductor capability in India is a generational undertaking, and the combination of policy ambition, private capital, and talent on display this week gives me great confidence in the road ahead.
Sriram Viswanathan retweeted
Big companies often miss emerging markets because they start too small. @sriramk explains why that creates a powerful opening for startups. @TVMohandasPai @svembu @RajeevRC_X @GargiRawat
A few years ago, @rkhemani Barun Kar and I sat down at a Warriors game. By the end of the night, we had a plan to build a blockchain company together. Today, @velaura_ai has raised a $110 million Series A at a $1B+ valuation led by Seligman.
@CelestaCapital led the first round, together with @NavinChaddha at @MayfieldFund and @fgthiel and MARA joined us. Along the way, our original thesis evolved into ultra-low power generative AI solutions. What has carried it from there to here was the underlying innovation: squeezing more computation out of every watt. Velaura's platform delivers 2-4x improvement in performance per watt, and the underlying technology has already shipped in more than 30 million production ASICs.
As Chairman, I have had a front-row seat as Rajiv and the team turned that technical strength into a platform spanning the data center and the physical world. The road from that game to here was not a straight line, and there is more to build. Congratulations to Rajiv, Manu Gulati, and everyone at Velaura. The photo below is from those early days.
Full news: velaura.ai/velaura-ai-raises…
AI infrastructure is suddenly the most fashionable place in technology to invest. (No surprise given 15 of the 20 most valuable companies in the world now occupy this space...)
Today I published a deep dive sharing how we think about the AI infra moment and the portfolio we have built in this space. Conviction is not certainty, and the piece is candid about where this could break.
The era ahead will be defined by who can build the hardware making it possible to profitably run frontier AI models. The metric now governing AI is the cost and energy required to produce each token – and a token is produced by a system, not only a chip: the processor, the power that feeds it, the memory and interconnect, the network binding tens of thousands of chips together, the timing keeping it all in sync.
That conviction sits underneath how we have constructed our portfolio at @CelestaCapital, investing deliberately at each layer: @SambaNovaAI @TensordyneInc @velaura_ai @upscale_ai_inc @NormalComputing & many others.
Early in my career at Intel, I had the good fortune to support the office of legendary Andy Grove. His prescription for moments such as this, when an industry's foundations shift: let chaos reign, then rein in chaos. You let the experiments multiply, and when the answer emerges, you commit with everything you have.
More thoughts on our substack. techsurgebriefing.substack.c…
Sriram Viswanathan retweeted
What will it take to be the next trillion-dollar chip company?
@chipstrat's @theaustinlyons maps the inference-first silicon era. Along the way he highlights standout Celesta PortCos @SambaNovaAI and @TensordyneInc.
Check it out: chipstrat.com/p/the-next-tri…
Sriram Viswanathan retweeted
Congrats to @SambaNovaAI team on first close of their $1B Series F at an $11B valuation!
As their first VC investor with support of @LipBuTan1, we're proud to have backed this amazing team from the beginning. More in @TechCrunch: techcrunch.com/2026/07/08/sa…
Few have shaped how we organize and access information more than Google Chief Technologist @WittedNote.
On the latest @TechsurgePod we trace this amazing path from early web search and PageRank to transformers, Gemini, and the future of AI-powered search: techsurgepodcast.com/podcast…
The next semiconductor bottleneck may not be a fab.
It may be the minerals that make the entire supply chain possible.
We have rightly focused on TSMC, ASML, and advanced manufacturing capacity. But critical minerals are another concentrated layer of risk.
On @TechsurgePod I spoke with @GraceBaskaran of @CSIS on this risk.
China processes 99% of heavy rare earths. The U.S. material stockpile fell from $25B in 1990 to $900M last year. A disruption could carry $6T+ in economic impact.
Listen: techsurgepodcast.com/podcast…
Sriram Viswanathan retweeted
Cabinet’s approval of new projects under the India Semiconductor Mission is a part of our efforts towards making India a leader in the global semiconductor value chain, focussing on manufacturing, packaging and advanced materials. India’s advances in the world of semiconductors will boost economic transformation, technological self-reliance and encourage the innovation ecosystem.
pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.…
Sriram Viswanathan retweeted
Congrats to @DustPhotonics and @credosemi on this milestone. 👏
DP built important technology for next-gen optical connectivity. Credo is a leader in high-speed connectivity. Coming together is a huge advancement as AI drives demand for more bandwidth, performance, & efficiency.
Good regulation should create guardrails, not roadblocks.
That was one of my biggest takeaways from my conversation with SEC Commissioner @HesterPeirce on the latest @TechsurgePod episode.
We spent a lot of time on a question that goes well beyond crypto:
How do you protect investors and preserve market integrity without making it harder for innovators to solve real problems?
Her answer: not ambiguity. Not regulation by enforcement.
Clear rules. Low barriers to entry. Room for innovation to compete.
That matters in crypto. It also matters for whether the U.S. remains a place where entrepreneurs can build and markets can evolve.
We also got into tokenization, stablecoins, Bitcoin, and what it will take to build a more durable U.S. crypto framework.
Thoughtful conversation on @TechsurgePod from @CelestaCapital. Thank you to Commissioner Peirce for joining us.
Watch here: youtube.com/watch?v=R6qZO0tp…
