Nvidia-backed SiFive is valued at $3.65 billion for open source AI chips

Founded in 2015 by UC Berkeley engineers who created the open-source chip design, SiFive is now More than 400 million dollars were subscribed The round valued the company at $3.65 billion.

This contract is interesting for many reasons. First, SiFive’s RISC-V open-chip design is based on a RISC processor, not Intel’s x86 or ARM, the two main CPU types that currently feed Nvidia’s GPU computing system AI empire.

Also, Nvidia was an investor in this round, along with a long list of VCs, private equity and hedge funds. The round was led by Atreides Management, founded by former Fidelity investor Gavin Baker. (Atreides was also an investor Cerebras Systems $1 billion turnover). Other investors in the round include Apollo Global Management, D1 Capital Partners, Point72 Turion, T. Rowe Price Sutter Hill Ventures and others.

SiFive’s business model is similar to Arm’s in years past – it licenses its chip designs to those who modify them for their own needs, and doesn’t sell the chips themselves. (in March Arm changed its model when it launched the first chip it produced. An AI chip developed in conjunction with Meta with customers including OpenAI, Cerebras, and Cloudflare.)

SiFive stands in thin air with open, non-proprietary as well as neutral, customer-agnostic chip designs. In fact, SiFive hasn’t raised money since March 2022, when it raised $175 million at a pre-money valuation of $2.33 billion from Coatue Management, according to Pitchbook estimates. Intel Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, Aramco Ventures were part of this round.

RISC-V, until recently, was known as a chip for smaller uses such as embedded systems. But with that money and Nvidia’s attention, SiFive AI is moving into CPUs for data centers. SiFive designs It will work with Nvidia CUDA software and its NVLink Fusiona rack server system that allows different CPUs to connect to Nvidia’s “AI factory.”

In other words, as rivals Intel and AMD try to compete with Nvidia’s GPU, Nvidia is supporting an 11-year-old startup that can design a CPU in an open and completely alternative technology.