Netris raises $15M from a16z to accelerate AI neocloud networking

Netris, a network automation startup founded eight years before the AI boom, has raised $15 million in Series A funding from Andreessen Horowitz to help smaller data center operators—known as neoclouds—launch GPU clusters faster. The company provides software that runs on network switches and a platform to automate setup, configuration, and operations. This is critical because with GPU clusters costing millions, idle time due to manual networking setup is extremely expensive. Netris’s platform is vendor-agnostic, compatible with both Nvidia and AMD servers, and offers hardware-accelerated network abstraction and multi-tenancy at the hardware layer. It replaces traditional software-defined networking (SDN), which struggles with the high traffic volumes of AI workloads.

Netris is already live at more than 35 GPU clusters worldwide, managing about one million GPUs for customers like Lightning AI, Foxconn, Visionbay, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, TensorWave, and Telus. Notably, the company does not use AI in its product; it relies on deterministic algorithms for repeatable, persistent configuration changes. The fresh capital will be used to hire engineers and sales staff, add support for more hardware vendors, and enhance its automation algorithm. a16z partner Guido Appenzeller joins the board. For neocloud operators, Netris’s solution can reduce time-to-market from months to weeks, directly improving ROI on expensive GPU hardware.