The “AI data foundry” Centific closed a $60 million Series A funding round led by the Singapore-based venture fund Granite Asia, as the U.S.-based startup explores an ambitious expansion to Asia.
AI startups are now paying close attention to Asia as they search for new markets for their AI models. Local AI developers, such as China’s DeepSeek, are showing that Asian AI models are sitting on the technological frontier.
“This funding round isn’t about necessity; it’s about ambition,” CEO Venkat Rangapuram said in a statement. “This investment turbocharges our mission: to empower enterprises with AI systems that are resilient, agile, and meticulously fine-tuned.”
Centific plans to use the funds to expand the functionality of its platform, improve its research and development, and deepen its collaboration with partners like Nvidia, Microsoft, and Lenovo.
The AI startup works with larger businesses to develop, train, and deploy their AI, including trying to eliminate bias, hallucinations, and other mistakes. “Unless the model is grounded in very specific scenarios and datasets, it can’t really solve enterprise-related issues,” Rangapuram said in a conversation with Fortune. “There’s a whole lot of things that need to be thought about before you can go live in an enterprise setup.”
Centific started as the U.S. division of Pactera, a Chinese IT consulting and outsourcing firm. After Chinese Electronics Corp., a Chinese state-owned company, acquired Pactera in 2020, it carved out the U.S. business, which eventually became an independent company.
Rangapuram told Fortune that he was intrigued by the “disruptive and exciting possibilities” of physical AI, particularly in ASEAN and Singapore. (“Physical AI” refers to models designed to work with real-world machinery, like manufacturing equipment.) “The future is not just in North America, it’s global,” he said.
The wish to expand to new markets was why Centific turned to Granite Asia and famed venture capitalist (and MPW Asia listee) Jenny Lee, one of the fund’s senior managing partners. Rangapuram pointed to Granite’s “network and resources within Asia and India” as part of the reason why he turned to Lee and her fund “as we diversify from the North American market into alternate markets around the globe.”
Granite Asia, in turn, sees the Centific investment as part of its mission to build “enduring infrastructure for the future of industry,” Lee said in a statement accompanying the funding announcement. Centific “is uniquely positioned to become a foundational partner in the enterprise AI stack.”
Granite Asia was born from GGV Capital, a venture giant with deep roots in Asia. Lee set up GGV’s first China office in 2005, and backed giants like Alibaba, Grab, and Xiaomi. Yet in 2023, following U.S. congressional scrutiny of venture investments in China, GGV decided to split itself into two, with its Asia-based business becoming Granite Asia.
The fund has quickly built new relationships across the region. Late last year, it formed a strategic partnership with the Indonesia Investment Authority, one of Indonesia’s sovereign wealth funds, to deploy $1.2 billion into investment opportunities. In March, it announced a new joint venture with Japanese private equity firm Integral to pool together $100 million into Japan’s tech sector.
Then on Tuesday, Granite Asia was one of two foreign VCs, alongside Taiwan’s AppWorks, selected to take part in a new Malaysian initiative to invest in local startups and encourage global companies to redomicile in the Southeast Asian country.
“We always felt there was a lack of capital focus in Asia towards Asia companies,” Lee told Fortune in late October. “Our vision is to become the dominant capital platform for startups, founders, and businesses across the region: capital for the region that’s anchored in the region.”
