South Africa-founded startup Refiant AI has raised $5 million in seed funding to develop technology aimed at reducing the energy and computing costs of artificial intelligence systems.
The round was led by California-based climate technology investor VoLo Earth Ventures, the company said, without disclosing its valuation.
Founded in 2025 by Viroshan Naicker, Siddharth Gutta and Mathew Haswell, Refiant AI builds tools that compress and restructure AI models to make them more efficient. The company says its technology lowers the computational requirements of AI systems while maintaining performance, allowing them to run on smaller devices or local infrastructure.
The funding will be used to expand its platform, hire engineers and deepen partnerships with enterprise customers, the company said.
The investment comes as demand for AI drives a surge in spending on data centre infrastructure. Technology companies including Microsoft and Meta have committed tens of billions of dollars to expand capacity for AI workloads.
That growth has raised concerns over energy consumption. Data centres are among the fastest-growing sources of electricity demand globally, with projections showing usage could more than double in the next decade as AI adoption increases.
Refiant AI said its approach offers an alternative to scaling AI through larger infrastructure.
“AI’s growing energy footprint is one of the most urgent challenges in the climate space,” co-founder Siddharth Gutta said. “Our approach is to make the AI itself more efficient.”
The company said its technology could be particularly useful in regions with limited computing resources or high cloud costs, including for sectors such as banking, telecommunications and government services.
Refiant AI is in early discussions with multinational technology firms as it seeks to expand its customer base.
“AI’s biggest constraint isn’t demand — it’s energy,” said Joseph Goodman, managing partner at VoLo Earth Ventures. “Refiant’s approach focuses on efficiency rather than brute-force scaling.”