Nvidia-backed SiFive hits $3.65 billion valuation for open AI chips

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

This agreement is interesting for several reasons. For one thing, SiFive’s RISC-V open chip design is based on the RISC processor, not Intel’s x86 or ARM, the two main types of CPUs currently powering Nvidia’s GPU computing system AI empire.

Additionally, Nvidia was an investor in this round, along with a long list of venture capitalists, private equity, and hedge funds. The round was led by Atreides Management, founded by former Fidelity investor bigwig Gavin Baker. (Atreides was also an investor in Cerebras Systems billion dollar round). 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 that of Arm, which disappeared years ago: it licenses its chip designs to those who modify them for their own needs and does not sell the chips themselves. (In March, Arm changed its model when it launched the first chip it made, an AI chip, developed with Meta with clients such as OpenAI, Cerebras and Cloudflare).

SiFive remains in rarefied air with chip designs that are open, non-proprietary, as well as neutral and not dependent on specific customers. In fact, SiFive hasn’t raised funding since March 2022, Pitchbook estimates, when it raised $175 million led by Coatue Management at a pre-money valuation of $2.33 billion. Intel Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, Aramco Ventures were part of that round.

RISC-V has, until recently, been better known as a chip for smaller uses, such as embedded systems. But with this money and attention from Nvidia, SiFive is moving into CPUs for AI data centers. SiFive designs 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 look to compete with Nvidia’s GPU, Nvidia is backing an 11-year-old startup that can design CPUs with open, completely alternative technology.