Semiconductor startup Positron has secured $230 million in Series B funding, according to TechCrunch exclusively. The outfit plans to use the capital to accelerate development of high-speed memory chips, a critical component for chips used for AI workloads, sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.
Investors in the round include Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), the country’s sovereign wealth fund, which has increasingly focused on building artificial intelligence infrastructure, the sources said.
The Reno-based startup’s Series B comes as hyperscalers and artificial intelligence companies push to reduce their reliance on longtime leader Nvidia. These companies include OpenAI, which, despite being one of Nvidia’s biggest and most important customers, is according to information has been unhappy with some of the company’s latest AI chips and has been looking for alternatives since last year.
Meanwhile, Qatar, through the QIA, has accelerated a broader push into so-called “dominant” AI infrastructure – a priority repeatedly highlighted at the Qatar Web Summit in Doha this week. Several sources told TechCrunch that the country sees computing power as critical to staying competitive on the global economic stage and is positioning itself as a leading hub for AI services in the Middle East, fueling interest in startups like Positron.
The strategy is already taking shape through major commitments, including a $20 billion AI infrastructure joint venture with Brookfield Asset Management which was announced in September.
Positron’s fundraising brings the three-year-old startup’s total capital raised to just over $300 million. The startup previously raised $75 million last year from investors including Valor Equity Partners, Atreides Management, DFJ Growth, Flume Ventures and Resilience Reserve.
The company claims its first-generation Atlas chip, manufactured in Arizona, can match the performance of Nvidia’s H100 GPUs for less than a third of the power. Positron focuses on inference – computations needed to run AI models for real-world applications – rather than training large language models, positioning the company as a growing demand for inference hardware as businesses increasingly shift focus from building large models to developing them at scale.
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Sources tell TechCrunch that in addition to its memory capabilities, Positron’s chips also have strong performance in high-frequency workloads and video processing.
TechCrunch has reached out to Positron for more information.
