Santa Clara, Calif, April 16, 2024 – Rivos, a company that designs power-efficient server chips using RISC-V architecture, targeting the growing needs of data analysis and generative AI, announced it has raised more than $250M in its oversubscribed Series A-3 funding round and Matrix Capital Management, the largest investor in this round, has joined the Board represented by Romit Shah. The funding saw participation from new investors including Intel Capital, MediaTek, Cambium Capital, CIDC, Capital TEN, and Hotung Venture Group, and increased participation from existing investors Walden Catalyst, Dell Technologies Capital, Koch Disruptive Technologies, and VentureTech Alliance.
The funding will enable the company to tapeout its first silicon product. It will also allow the company to meet increasing customer demand by expansion of manufacturing operations, platform hardware, software engineering, and support functions.
“The rapid changes in LLMs and the merger with the data analytics stack makes it vital that accelerators be easy to program and debug, and that data can seamlessly move between CPU and accelerator. Furthermore, Rivos addresses this need through our recompile-not-redesign approach.” said Puneet Kumar, co-founder and CEO of Rivos. “I’m grateful for Matrix’s vote of confidence in this approach and pleased to welcome Romit to the Board.”
Rivos provides power-optimized chips with high-performance server-class RISC-V CPUs. Additionally, they integrate a Data Parallel Accelerator, optimized for large language models (LLMs) and data analytics. It operates within today’s software programming models and rack server constraints. Today’s models benefit greatly from the ideal integration of CPU and parallel computation, sharing memory across DDR DRAM and HBM. Databases that need terabytes of memory benefit greatly from this setup. Moreover, Rivos is one of the leaders of the RISC-V open ecosystem. Calista Redmond, CEO of RISC-V International, commented “Rivos quickly became an active participant in the community. The depth of experience from the Rivos engineers has enabled RISC-V to leap ahead in ISA, system and security specifications.” On the software side Rivos was an instigator of the RISC-V Software Ecosystem (RISE) initiative.
“Expanding the application of data analytics and large language models to encompass not just traditional data types such as text, images, and video, but also genomic and medical data, unlocks unprecedented opportunities for innovation in research and treatment,” remarked David Goel, Managing General Partner of Matrix Capital Management. “The Rivos team has adeptly integrated the groundbreaking new RISC-V architecture. They’ve paired it with an inventive accelerator, effectively bringing this vision to life. Their prototype chip serves as a compelling demonstration of their unique capability. Moreover, they leverage the advanced TSMC 3nm process node, a feat few startups have managed to achieve. We eagerly anticipate furthering our support for the company’s move into new realms of achievement. We mark each milestone with shared enthusiasm and commitment to excellence.”
