Exclusive: Positron raises $230M Series B to acquire Nvidia AI chips

Introduction to Semiconductors Positron has raised $230 million in Series B funding, TechCrunch has learned. The outfit plans to use the capital to accelerate the deployment of more high-speed chips, a critical component of chips used in heavy-duty AI, sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.

Investors in the round include Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), the country’s sovereign wealth fund, which has been focusing on building AI infrastructure, sources said.

The Reno-based startup’s Series B comes as hyperscalers and AI companies push to reduce their reliance on longtime leader Nvidia. These companies include OpenAI, which, despite being one of Nvidia’s largest and most important customers, is he says unsatisfied with the company’s latest AI chips and has been looking for alternatives since last year.

Meanwhile, Qatar, through the QIA, has been accelerating a broader push towards what it calls a “representative” AI infrastructure – which was repeatedly played down at Web Summit Qatar in Doha this week. Multiple sources told TechCrunch that the country sees computing power as critical to competitiveness in the global economy, and is positioning itself as a leading AI hub in the Middle East, sparking interest in startups like Positron.

This process is already underway through major initiatives, including a $20 billion AI initiative partnered with Brookfield Asset Management which was announced in September.

Positron’s fundraising brings the initial three-year funding raised to over $300 million. The startup raised $75 million last year from investors including Valor Equity Partners, Atreides Management, DFJ Growth, Flume Ventures and Resilience Reserve.

The company says its first-generation chip, Atlas, made in Arizona, can match the performance of Nvidia’s H100 GPUs at less than a third of the power. Positron focuses on control — the computers needed to run AI models in real-world applications — rather than teaching large-scale language models, positioning the company as a must-have for enterprise product technology as businesses increasingly move from building large models to deploying them at scale.

Sources tell TechCrunch that beyond its memory capabilities, Positron’s chips are also powerful in high-speed computing and video processing.

TechCrunch has reached out to Positron for more information.