Chip Startups

Sequoia Capital-backed chip startup Nuvacore is raising funds at a valuation of about $2.5 billion, sources told reporters on October 10, in the latest sign that investor appetite for AI hardware has fully returned after a decade of venture capital treating chips as too slow and too capital-intensive to bother with.

Nvidia plans to take a stake in d-Matrix, a Santa Clara startup that designs chips for AI inference, The Information reported on October 8. The investment, whose size and valuation were not disclosed, is part of a broader Nvidia strategy to make its technology interoperable with rival silicon rather than fighting every inference workload alone.