Bengaluru-based AGNIT Semiconductors has secured $2.6 million in a Seed Extension funding round led by Shastra VC, with continued participation from existing investors 3one4 Capital and Zephyr Peacock India.
IISc incubated AGNIT, which had raised $3.5 million in its initial seed round in 2024, has now raised over $7 million in total funding to date. According to the announcement, the fresh capital will be deployed to scale production to 1 lakh gallium nitride (GaN) components over the next 24 months and to expand operations into telecom infrastructure and high-efficiency power semiconductor devices.
AGNIT Semiconductors was founded in 2019 by Hareesh Chandrasekar, Digbijoy Neelim Nath, Madhusudan Atre, Mayank Shrivastava, Muralidharan Rangarajan, Shankar Kumar Selvaraja, and Srinivasan Raghavan. It emerged from more than 15 years of research at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and positions itself as India’s first vertically integrated GaN semiconductor manufacturer, handling both GaN material (wafer) production and electronic component design, primarily for radio-frequency (RF) applications.
The startup’s RF products are currently in pilot deployments across strategic defence platforms. It plans to begin commercial shipments in July 2027 as part of its next phase of commercialisation. Key near-term activities include scaling GaN RF products to volume production, launching telecom RF chip pilots, and validating high-performance GaN power devices.
AGNIT has adopted a military-to-commercial strategy, initially supplying chips to defence contractors. The approach is driven by the sector’s demand for extreme reliability, rigorous testing, and uncompromising quality. While defence volumes are lower (in the thousands rather than millions), the company states this provides high-margin revenue to fund its manufacturing learning curve, third-party validation that is difficult to replicate, and time to refine its fab-lite model before targeting high-volume markets.
The firm has paused earlier efforts on electric vehicle components to concentrate on strategic sectors where GaN demand is currently stronger. Its longer-term objective remains powering millions of electric two-wheelers in India once defence-grade validation and process optimisation are achieved. It references the projected growth of the GaN defence market to $1.5 billion by 2026 as sufficient to prove technology, refine processes, and strengthen the supply chain.
Separately, AGNIT Semiconductors received Nasscom’s Deep Tech Emerge 50 startup award for 2025 in the Semiconductor category. The company also announced the appointment of Dr. Jyotiranjan Sahoo as Senior Process Integration Engineer. Dr. Sahoo holds a PhD from IISc Bengaluru and previously worked at Ola Electric, bringing experience in process development to support the firm’s scaling phase.
