AI startup Enfabrica raises $115 million, plans to release chip next year
Updates paragraph 7 with additional investors
By Stephen Nellis
Nov 19 (Reuters) -Enfabrica, a California-based startup that aims to make AI chips work more efficiently together at scale, said on Tuesday it raised $115 million in funding and plans to release its newest chip early next year.
Founded by veterans from Broadcom AVGO.O and Alphabet GOOGL.O, Enfabrica is tackling one of the biggest technical problems that has emerged in the AI field: how to tie tens of thousands or more chips together with a network.
If that network is too slow, expensive chips from firms such as Nvidia NVDA.O, which is an investor in Enfabrica, end up sitting idle and waiting for data.
Enfabrica's chip aims to address the bottlenecks by letting AI computing chips talk to more parts of a network at once than current networking chips. Enfabrica co-founder and Chief Executive Rochan Sankar told Reuters that current technologies can string together about 100,000 AI computing chips before the network starts to bog down.
Sankar said Enfabrica's technology could boost that figure to about 500,000 chips and make it possible to train even larger AI models. This process often takes weeks or months, and millions of dollars can be wasted if the resulting AI model is not reliable or accurate.
"It's become apparent in the last six to nine months that the attributes of that network really drive the capability of that (computing power), whether it's bandwidth, resiliency or recovery from loss," Sankar said. "All these things matter when you start running at scale."
The funding round announced on Tuesday was led by Spark Capital, joined by new investors Maverick Silicon and VentureTech Alliance. Arm Holdings ARM.O and venture capital funds from Samsung Electronics 005930.KS and Cisco Systems CSCO.O also invested as part of the round.
Also joining the funding round were existing investors that include Atreides Management, Alumni Ventures, IAG Capital, Liberty Global Ventures, Sutter Hill Ventures and Valor Equity Partners.
Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Bill Berkrot
Related Assets
Latest News
Disclaimer: The XM Group entities provide execution-only service and access to our Online Trading Facility, permitting a person to view and/or use the content available on or via the website, is not intended to change or expand on this, nor does it change or expand on this. Such access and use are always subject to: (i) Terms and Conditions; (ii) Risk Warnings; and (iii) Full Disclaimer. Such content is therefore provided as no more than general information. Particularly, please be aware that the contents of our Online Trading Facility are neither a solicitation, nor an offer to enter any transactions on the financial markets. Trading on any financial market involves a significant level of risk to your capital.
All material published on our Online Trading Facility is intended for educational/informational purposes only, and does not contain – nor should it be considered as containing – financial, investment tax or trading advice and recommendations; or a record of our trading prices; or an offer of, or solicitation for, a transaction in any financial instruments; or unsolicited financial promotions to you.
Any third-party content, as well as content prepared by XM, such as: opinions, news, research, analyses, prices and other information or links to third-party sites contained on this website are provided on an “as-is” basis, as general market commentary, and do not constitute investment advice. To the extent that any content is construed as investment research, you must note and accept that the content was not intended to and has not been prepared in accordance with legal requirements designed to promote the independence of investment research and as such, it would be considered as marketing communication under the relevant laws and regulations. Please ensure that you have read and understood our Notification on Non-Independent Investment. Research and Risk Warning concerning the foregoing information, which can be accessed here.
