Netris, a Santa Clara-based provider of network automation for AI infrastructure, has raised $15 million in Series A funding led by Andreessen Horowitz. The company offers the NAAM platform, a unified control plane that automates Ethernet, InfiniBand, NVLink, and DPU fabrics for GPU cloud operators. The capital will accelerate adoption among neoclouds, sovereign AI providers, and NVIDIA Cloud Partners.
a16z Signals AI Networking Validation
The round comes as AI infrastructure operators race to deploy GPU clusters at scale. NetBrain Technologies received a $750 million valuation from Blackstone in July 2025, while Alkira was acquired by Lumen for $475 million in May 2026. Netris differentiates by delivering hardware-enforced multi-tenancy and full-stack automation across NVIDIA fabrics, a gap competitors have not addressed.
AI Fabric Complexity Creates Bottleneck
Operators must manage 23-plus network connections per GPU server across multiple fabric types. Traditional SDN controllers built for enterprise data centers cannot handle concurrent Ethernet, InfiniBand, and NVLink reconfiguration. Provisioning a tenant previously required days or weeks, according to NVIDIA VP Yael Asseraf Shenhav.
Unified Control Plane Replaces Fragmented Tooling
Netris NAAM provides AWS-style abstractions such as VPCs and elastic IPs while enforcing isolation at the switch and DPU hardware level. It integrates with NVIDIA DSX Air for simulation-first deployment and BlueField DPUs for single-GPU granularity. This approach lets operators launch GPU clouds in weeks instead of years and reallocate capacity across tenants in real time.
"Without Netris, provisioning a tenant would take days or weeks. With Netris, it's seconds." — Yael Asseraf Shenhav, VP SuperNIC and DPU Products & Business, NVIDIA
Mission Capital Validates Category Creation
Andreessen Horowitz led the round, with partner Guido Appenzeller joining the board. The firm previously backed Nicira and NSX, which reshaped data center networking. The investment signals conviction that Netris can repeat that playbook for AI infrastructure, where 800 percent ARR growth and 35-plus live deployments already demonstrate traction.
Neocloud Market Expands at 46 Percent CAGR
The neocloud market is projected to grow from $35.2 billion in 2026 to $236.5 billion by 2031 at a 46.4 percent CAGR. Netris has captured 12 percent of global neocloud operators in under a year. Competitors such as Hedgehog, MetalSoft, and Loft Labs focus on narrower slices of the stack and lack the multi-fabric, hardware-isolation capabilities required for sovereign AI and large-scale GPU clouds.
Lightning AI and TELUS Anchor Early Wins
Lightning AI, the third-largest neocloud with 35,000-plus NVIDIA GPUs, standardized on Netris for every new data center build. TELUS, Canada's largest telco, selected the platform for its sovereign AI factory. Both customers cite the ability to provision tenants in minutes rather than days as the decisive factor.