C2i Semiconductors has raised $15 million in a round led by Peak XV, a figure DD News reports as the largest funding round secured by an Indian chip startup to date.

The round gives the young company a capital base that stands out in a domestic semiconductor ecosystem still better known for design services than for funded product startups. Peak XV, the venture firm formerly known as Sequoia Capital India and Southeast Asia, anchored the investment, according to the DD News report.

C2i also carries backing from DLI, the report notes, tying the startup to one of the programs Washington has used to seed early-stage semiconductor ventures. That detail matters commercially: companies with DLI support gain access to a network of government, laboratory and industry partners that pure private rounds do not provide, and the combination of a US government-linked program with Peak XV's capital signals that investors on two continents see a viable path for the company's technology.

The $15 million figure is modest by global semiconductor standards, where a single advanced-node fab runs to tens of billions of dollars. But the number is significant at the stage C2i occupies. Early-stage chip ventures typically burn capital on tooling, prototyping and qualification long before revenue arrives, and a round of this size buys a startup years of runway rather than months. DD News frames it as the largest single raise by an Indian chip startup, which positions C2i at the top of a funding table that remains thin compared with the United States, Europe and China.

The raise lands as India pushes to convert policy ambition into a working semiconductor supply chain. The country has committed roughly $10 billion in incentives under its semiconductor mission to attract fabs, assembly and test plants, and design activity, and New Delhi has spent two years courting global manufacturers. Most of the headline projects to date sit in packaging and display panels rather than leading-edge logic. A venture-funded design or specialty chip startup such as C2i represents the other end of the value chain, where capital requirements are lower and intellectual property, not concrete, is the asset.

For Peak XV, the deal extends a pattern of placing early bets in Indian deep tech. The firm, which rebranded from Sequoia India in 2023 and manages an independently operated portfolio across India and Southeast Asia, has increased its exposure to hardware-adjacent startups as founders in the region move beyond consumer internet. Semiconductor investments test that thesis harder than most: development cycles run long, exit paths are narrower, and the gap between a working prototype and qualified production volume is where chip startups most often fail.

The DD News report does not disclose a valuation for the round, nor does it break down whether other investors participated alongside Peak XV. The $15 million figure and the DLI connection are the confirmed elements; what C2i builds, at which nodes, and for which customers remains outside the published details of the deal.

What follows now is execution. If C2i converts the round into qualified products and customer wins, it becomes a reference point that could pull more venture capital into Indian semiconductor ventures — and if it stalls, the largest chip startup raise in the country's history will illustrate why investors have historically hesitated to fund them.