India’s startup funding scene is rarely limited to one sector. This week’s activity moves from a croissant-waffle food chain and kids’ snacks to mutual fund advice and AI chips.

The Croffle Guys and Troovy have announced fresh funding rounds. PowerUp Money has raised USD 10 million for its wealth-management push. Meanwhile, Agrani Labs is reportedly in talks for a much larger round, though that deal is not confirmed yet.

The Croffle Guys plans a bigger store network

Mumbai-based quick-service restaurant startup The Croffle Guys has raised Rs. 14 crore at a reported post-money valuation of Rs. 100 crore. V3 Ventures led the round, with N.A.N Partners also participating.

Founded in 2025 by Rahul Vohra, Annanya Agarwal, Amay Thakkar and Veer Pinto, the company sells croffles – a mix of a croissant and a waffle – in sweet and savoury flavours.

The funding is meant to support rapid expansion. The company plans to add more than 40 outlets, mainly in Mumbai and Delhi, while also exploring selected locations in Pune. It currently operates eight outlets after starting with two stores.

The challenge will be keeping product quality and store-level profits steady while growing fast. In the food-service market, The Croffle Guys will compete for attention with café chains, dessert outlets and quick-service brands that already have deeper reach.

PowerUp Money looks beyond mutual fund tracking

Bengaluru-based PowerUp Money has raised USD 10 million, or about Rs. 95 crore, in a round led by Flourish Ventures. Existing backers, including Peak XV Partners, Accel, Blume Ventures, Kae Capital, 8i Ventures and DeVC, also participated.

Founded by Prateek Jindal, who earlier co-founded Uni Cards, PowerUp Money helps people review, select and manage mutual fund investments. The company was incorporated in 2025 after being developed within the Uni Cards ecosystem.

Its fresh capital will be used to build AI-led wealth-management tools, grow its managed advisory service and offer more personalized financial planning. In practical terms, the company wants to help an investor understand whether their mutual fund mix matches their goals, risk level and time horizon.

PowerUp Money’s competitors include traditional wealth managers, banks, mutual fund distributors and digital investment platforms. Its pitch is that technology can make advisory services more accessible, but investors should remember that no app can guarantee market returns.

Agrani Labs may be heading for a major AI-chip round

As reported earlier also, Agrani Labs is reportedly in discussions to raise USD 100 million at a valuation of around USD 300 million to USD 350 million. Google, HCLTech, Groww founders’ Stargazer fund, Peak XV Partners and 360 ONE are among the names linked to the talks.

This remains a reported discussion, not a completed funding announcement. The final amount, valuation and investor list may change.

Founded in 2024 by Dheemanth Nagaraj, Ashok Jagannathan, Srikanth Nimmagadda and Rajesh Vivekanandham, Agrani Labs is building AI chips and related software for enterprise and data-centre computing. The founders have experience at companies including Intel and AMD.

If the round closes, the money could go towards chip development, research and engineering. Agrani is entering a difficult market dominated by global companies such as Nvidia. Its aim is not simply to design hardware, but to develop software that makes the chips useful for AI workloads.

Troovy doubles down on children’s snacks

Gurugram-based Troovy has raised Rs. 100 crore in a Series B round led by Fireside Ventures, with Sharrp Ventures and other investors participating.

Founded in 2021 by Mansi Baranwal and Aditya Mukherjee, Troovy makes snacks and food products for children and families, including chips, puffs, cookies, sauces, spreads and milk mixes. The brand focuses on ingredients that avoid refined sugar, palm oil, preservatives and artificial additives.

The new funding will help Troovy improve research and development, expand manufacturing and grow its presence on quick-commerce platforms and offline stores. It competes with brands such as Slurrp Farm, Farmley and phab in the growing better-for-you food category.

Disclaimer

This article is for informational purposes only and is based on publicly available reports and company announcements. Funding figures, valuations, investor participation and business plans may change or remain unconfirmed, especially where a deal is reported to be under discussion. This is not investment, financial, legal or business advice.

Discovered Materials has raised $9 million in seed funding at a time when the chip industry is looking for answers beyond just smaller transistors and faster processors. The startup is working on a hard but important problem – finding new materials that can make semiconductor chips more efficient, cooler and easier to scale.

The seed round was led by Lightspeed India Partners. Y Combinator, Peak XV Partners and angel investors including Paul Graham, Gokul Rajaram and Thariq Shihipar also participated. As per reports, the funding is about Rs. 85 crore.

At the heart of the company’s plan is a simple idea. If AI is creating a huge demand for more computing power, then AI can also help find the materials needed to support that demand.

What Discovered Materials Is Building

Discovered Materials is building AI agents for semiconductor material discovery. In simple terms, these AI agents help researchers search for new materials that may be useful in chips, data centres and semiconductor factories.

Finding a useful new material is not like testing a new app feature. It can take years of lab work, failed experiments and careful validation. A material may look promising on paper but fail when it is tested in real conditions. It may also be too expensive or difficult to manufacture at scale.

Discovered Materials wants to shorten this long journey. The company says its AI agents work across simulation, synthesis and experimental testing. That means the system does not only suggest ideas. It is meant to help move promising material candidates closer to real lab validation.

Why The Funding Matters

The $9 million seed round gives Discovered Materials more room to build its team, expand lab work and improve its AI research agents.

This is important because the startup is working in a space where software alone is not enough. It needs strong AI models, but it also needs scientists, lab equipment and industry partnerships. A new chip material has to prove itself in the physical world.

The funding will also help the company work faster on thermal materials. These are materials that help manage heat. Heat is one of the biggest problems in modern AI chips. As chips become more powerful, they also produce more heat, and that heat needs to be moved away efficiently.

For a simple example, think about how your phone heats up during gaming or video recording. Now imagine that problem inside a data centre running thousands of AI chips all day. If heat is not managed well, performance drops, energy use rises and cooling costs go up.

Founders And Background

Discovered Materials was founded in 2026 by Akash Ramdas and Advaith Sridhar. The company is listed as a Y Combinator Spring 2026 startup and is based in San Francisco.

Both founders have links to IIT Madras, where they met more than a decade ago. Their backgrounds also explain why the company is trying to mix material science with AI.

Akash Ramdas has a PhD in Materials Science from Stanford University and has spent years researching new materials for semiconductor chips. His work includes nanoscale interconnect materials, which are important for how tiny chip components connect and transfer signals.

Advaith Sridhar studied AI at Carnegie Mellon University and has worked on AI models and agents at companies including Persona AI and Luma Labs. His experience fits the company’s AI-first approach to scientific research.

Together, they are trying to solve a problem that sits between two worlds – deep science and modern AI.

The Main Purpose Of The Funding

The aim of the funding is not just to grow quickly like a normal software startup. Discovered Materials needs capital to build a research engine that can move from idea to lab-tested material faster than traditional methods.

There are three clear purposes behind this seed round.

1. First, the company wants to scale its AI agents. These agents need to understand scientific problems, generate useful material ideas and help researchers make better decisions.
2. Second, the company wants to expand lab work. AI predictions are useful only when they survive real testing. A material that works in a simulation still has to be made, measured and compared with existing options.
3. Third, Discovered Materials wants to support the chip industry’s need for better thermal performance. As AI chips become hotter and more power-hungry, better heat management can become a major advantage.

Why Semiconductor Materials Are So Important

Most people hear about chips through names like Nvidia, AMD, Intel, TSMC or Samsung. But behind every chip is a long list of materials that affect speed, heat, power use and reliability.

Materials are used in packaging, wiring, insulation, cooling layers and many other parts of the chip system. If these materials improve, the chip can become more efficient without changing everything else.

This matters because chip progress has become harder. For years, the industry benefited from making transistors smaller. That path is now more difficult and costly. So companies are looking at other ways to improve performance. Better materials are one of those ways.

Discovered Materials is trying to sit right at this pressure point.

Material Discovery Bench

Along with the funding news, Discovered Materials has introduced Material Discovery Bench. The company describes it as an open-source benchmark for testing how well AI models can handle real semiconductor material discovery problems.

This is useful because AI tools often sound impressive, but scientific research needs proof. A benchmark gives researchers a way to compare models and check whether they are actually useful for serious material problems.

According to the company, the benchmark was built with inputs from experts connected to institutions and companies such as IBM, IMEC, Stanford and Cambridge. It is expected to grow further with simulation and experimental validation.

Competitors And Similar Companies

Discovered Materials is part of a growing group of startups using AI to speed up materials research.

• Materials Zone is one such company. It works on materials data and AI tools that help research teams manage and learn from experimental data.
• Materials Nexus, based in the UK, uses AI and physics-based methods to discover cleaner and more efficient materials. It has worked on areas linked to climate technology, batteries and semiconductors.
• Orbital Industries is another company in the broader AI materials space, with work linked to data centre infrastructure and advanced materials.

These companies do not all solve the same problem. Some focus on data systems, some on clean energy materials, and some on industrial hardware. But they show that AI-led material discovery is becoming a serious startup category.

Conclusion With Key Takeaways

Discovered Materials’ $9 million seed round is not just another AI funding story. It points to a bigger shift in the semiconductor industry. Chips need better materials, especially as AI workloads create more heat and demand more power.

The company’s bet is that AI agents can help scientists find and test new materials much faster than older research methods. If that works, it could help chipmakers improve performance, reduce heat problems and move useful discoveries from lab to fab more quickly.

Key takeaways –

• Discovered Materials has raised $9 million, about Rs. 85 crore, in seed funding.
• The round was led by Lightspeed India Partners, with participation from Y Combinator, Peak XV Partners and angel investors.
• The startup was founded in 2026 by Akash Ramdas and Advaith Sridhar.
• Its main focus is using AI agents to discover new semiconductor materials.
• The funding will support team growth, lab expansion and stronger AI research agents.

Facts Input- BS