Nova Spectral AI raises Rs 21.15 crore for India-made infrared chips

Nova Spectral AI, a Bengaluru-based deep-tech start-up, has raised Rs 21.15 crore (about $2.25 million) in a seed funding round led by Shastra VC, according to reports of the deal published on October 27, 2026. Equirus InnovateX Fund and a group of angel investors also took part. The company is developing short-wave infrared image sensor chips that it says can be made on ordinary silicon, and it plans to use the money to build its team and reach a field-ready prototype within 18 months.

Most cameras, including the one in a phone, see visible light. Short-wave infrared, or SWIR, is light with a slightly longer wavelength that the human eye cannot see. Cameras that capture it can see through haze, smoke and fog, tell apart materials that look the same to the eye, and work in low light. That makes them useful in defence and surveillance, but also in factories that sort food or check product quality, in farming, and in medical imaging.

Today, SWIR sensors are expensive. They are usually made from special materials such as indium gallium arsenide, which have to be grown and joined to a separate reading chip in a slow, costly process. That keeps them out of most everyday products. Nova Spectral AI is trying a different route. It uses quantum dots, which are tiny crystals only a few billionths of a metre across, whose size can be tuned so that they absorb infrared light. These crystals can be coated directly on top of a standard silicon chip of the kind made in large volumes for ordinary cameras. CMOS, short for complementary metal-oxide semiconductor, is the common technology behind those chips.

Many quantum dot infrared sensors developed abroad use lead-based materials. The company says its dots are lead-free, which matters because rules on hazardous substances in electronics are tightening in many markets. Whether the design can match the performance of existing sensors at a much lower price is the central question, and the company has not yet shown results publicly. The 100-times cost figure is the company's own aim, not a measured outcome.

The deal also fits a wider push. India wants to design and make more of its own semiconductors and defence electronics instead of importing them. Infrared sensors for night vision and targeting are among the parts the armed forces buy from abroad. A start-up working on home-grown sensor chips, with an incubation link to IISc, is the kind of company that national programmes for chips and defence self-reliance are meant to encourage.

For investors, Shastra VC is a Bengaluru-based fund that backs companies built on their own intellectual property, such as patents and original hardware, rather than on apps or services. It has said it plans to write cheques of roughly $500,000 to $3 million per company from its latest fund.

Short-term: The money pays for engineers and laboratory work. The company has not named any customers or disclosed its valuation, so the next milestone to watch is a working prototype and published test data.

Long-term: If low-cost SWIR sensors made on standard silicon prove workable, they could move infrared vision from specialist military kit into cars, drones, farm equipment, phones and factory lines, and give India a domestic supplier for a part it now imports.

Who is affected: Deep-tech founders and researchers in India, who gain another example of early funding for hardware; defence and industrial buyers of infrared cameras; and investors watching whether semiconductor start-ups can deliver on technical promises.

Questions and Answers