Chip Startups

Oxford-based Salience Labs has closed an oversubscribed $125 million Series B funding round to scale its photonic networking chips for AI data center infrastructure. The round was led by Bullhound Capital, whose principal Callum Stewart is joining the company's board. New and returning backers include AMD Ventures, Intel Capital, SBI Group, Hudson River Trading and the British Business Bank, along with existing shareholders Applied Ventures, Oxford Science Enterprises, Cambridge Innovation Capital and Silicon Catalyst Ventures.

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.