Rivos raises $250m to make RISC-V-based AI ICs

Rivos has raised $250 million to make datacentre AI processors using RISC-V cores.

Rivos was founded by its CEO Puneet Kumar (pictured) who worked at P.A. Semi and was sued for theft of trade secrets by Apple when he left P.A. to found Rivos in 2021.

“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,” says Kumar, “Rivos addresses this need through our recompile-not-redesign approach.”

Rivos intends to use TSMC’s latest 3nm process – 3NE – for its chips.

Investors in Rivos are: VentureTech Alliance, Walden Catalyst, Dell Technologies Capital, Koch Disruptive Technologies, Matrix Capital Management, Intel and Mediatek.

Target market is to provide a cheaper alternative to AI GPUs and CPUs currently available.