Nvidia-backed SiFive reaches $3.65 billion in open AI chip value

SiFive, a company founded in 2015 by UC Berkeley engineers who created open source chip designs, has achieved a $400 million oversubscribed round that values ​​the company at $3.65 billion.

This deal is interesting for several reasons. First of all, SiFive’s RISC-V open chip design is based on RISC processors rather than Intel’s x86 or ARM, the two main types of CPUs currently supplying Nvidia’s AI empire of GPU computer systems.

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

SiFive’s business model is similar to Arm’s past. SiFive licenses its chip designs to people who modify them to suit their own needs and does not sell the chips themselves. (In March, Arm changed its model when it launched an AI chip, the first chip developed with Meta, with customers including OpenAI, Cerebras, and Cloudflare.)

SiFive is advanced with an open, non-proprietary chip design and a neutral chip design that does not depend on specific customers. In fact, SiFive is believed to have not raised funding since March 2022, when it raised $175 million at a pre-valuation of $2.33 billion, led by Coatue Management. Intel Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, and Aramco Ventures participated in the round.

RISC-V has until recently been better known for chips intended for small-scale applications such as embedded systems. But with this cash and interest from Nvidia, SiFive is turning to CPUs for AI data centers. SiFive’s design works with Nvidia’s CUDA software and NVLink Fusion, a rack server system that can connect a variety of CPUs to Nvidia’s “AI factory.”

In other words, as rivals Intel and AMD try to compete with Nvidia’s GPUs, Nvidia is backing an 11-year-old startup that can design CPUs with open and completely alternative technologies.