Cloud startup Lambda has raised venture capital investment

Lambda has raised venture capital investment in a Series D funding round

Cloud startup Lambda has raised US$480 million in venture capital investment in a Series D funding round. The round was led by Andra Capital and SGW, with participation from ARK Invest and Nvidia. The company specialises in providing access to GPUs for AI-related tasks.

Lambda is part of the Neocloud category of cloud startups, which are experiencing rapid growth in demand. In addition to GPUs, the company offers specialised software. It also provides the basis for launching and deploying AI models, including open-source models. Interest in such models has increased following the emergence of the Chinese AI DeepSeek.

In 2024, Lambda completed a Series C funding round, raising US$320 million. This puts the company’s valuation at more than US$1.5 billion. The total investment received is more than US$800 million. Considering the Series D round results, the company’s valuation now exceeds US$2.4 billion.

As for the dynamics of the sector, the PitchBook platform provided the following data:

• the venture capital sector grew by 270% in 2024;
• total funds raised totalled US$3.7 billion;
• 50 deals were recorded; in 2023, the figure was 39 agreements.

Generally, analysts note a surge in demand for Neocloud representatives. By comparison, the amount invested in Lambda is double the amount increased by the entire sector in 2018.

Sector overview

The rapid growth of the Neocloud sector is driven by the need to train and deploy artificial intelligence models. These processes require significant computing resources, particularly GPUs. Nvidia remains the main supplier of such solutions. The US vendor’s products can handle complex operations and cope well with AI workloads. 

However, AI startups have struggled in recent years. Since 2021, the market has experienced a shortage of hardware due to the growth of the crypto industry and increased mining. This led to disruptions in the supply chain and slowed production. The situation worsened in 2023, as interest in artificial intelligence grew rapidly.

One of the key representatives of the Neocloud sector is CoreWeave. Initially, this AI cloud service provider was involved in cryptocurrency mining. In 2024, it led a Series C funding round and raised over US$1 billion. Coatue was the lead investor.

GPU startup Crusoe is another strong player in the sector. It specialises in providing energy-efficient infrastructure for artificial intelligence computing. The company raised US$600 million in its Series D round. Founders Fund and Nvidia were the lead investors.