Netris raises $15M Series A from a16z to automate AI data center networking
Tags Infrastructure · AI · Enterprise
Netris, a network automation startup, raised $15 million in a Series A from Andreessen Horowitz, with a16z partner Guido Appenzeller joining the board. The company's software runs on network switches to help neocloud operators reduce time-to-live from months to days by automating setup, configuration, and multi-tenancy. Netris is live at over 35 GPU clusters worldwide (approximately 1 million GPUs) serving customers including Lightning AI, Foxconn, HPE, TensorWave, and Telus. Notably, the company uses deterministic algorithms rather than AI for network configuration.
Technical significance
As the AI data center buildout accelerates, networking is becoming the critical bottleneck — GPU clusters sit idle for months waiting for network configuration. Netris's hardware-accelerated approach addresses a real operational gap that traditional SDN solutions cannot handle at AI-scale traffic volumes. The fact that a16z backed a non-AI networking play suggests the AI infrastructure stack is now mature enough that the best opportunities are in tooling, not models.