Positron Secures $23.5 Million to Challenge NVIDIA with Made-in-America AI Chips

AI Chip Startup Positron Bags $23.5 Million Funding to Challenge NVIDIA's AI Dominance

Positron, an AI chip startup that aims to go head-to-head with NVIDIA, has raised $23.5 million in funding from investors, including Flume Ventures, Valor Equity Partners, Atreides Management, and Resilience Reserve. The company said it will use the fund to scale the production of its energy-efficient AI chips, offering businesses a more cost-effective alternative to NVIDIA's hardware. The company, launched in 2023, is led by Mitesh Agrawal, with co-founders Thomas Sohmers and Edward Kmett. "With this funding, we're scaling at a pace that AI hardware has never seen before-from expanding shipments of our first-generation products to bringing our second-generation accelerators to market in 2026," Agrawal said in a statement. He added that their solution is growing rapidly because it outperforms conventional GPUs in both cost and energy efficiency while delivering AI hardware that eliminates reliance on foreign supply chains. Positron, as a startup, claims to have already shipped products to data centres and neoclouds around the US. According to the company, their Atlas systems are presently achieving 3.5 times better performance per dollar and 3.5 times greater power efficiency than NVIDIA H100 GPUs for inference. Its servers powered by field-programmable gate array (FPGA) support models with up to a trillion parameters while offering plug-and-play compatibility with Hugging Face and OpenAI APIs. The system uses a memory-optimised architecture that uses more than 93% of the bandwidth. Traditional GPUs often consume upwards of 10,000 watts per server, creating a major hurdle for data centres with limited infrastructure. However, the chip's energy-efficient architecture makes it cost-efficient, allowing traditional data centres to harness AI computing without needing to overhaul the infrastructure completely. Addressing the chip's unique value proposition in a statement, one of the investors, Rob Reid, the co-founder of Resilience Reserve, said, "What sets Positron apart is not just its cost efficiency, but its ability to bring AI hardware to market at an unprecedented speed and provide high performance per watt. Their innovative approach is enabling businesses to scale AI workloads without the typical barriers of cost and power consumption." Positron mentioned that it has built a fully American supply chain, which ensures that its AI hardware is designed, fabricated, and assembled in the US. With developments like this, including OpenAI's aim to produce AI chips, it should be exciting to see who succeeds in taking off NVIDIA's AI crown.

Positron Raises USD 23.5 Million to Deliver Made-In-America AI Chips

Energy-Efficient AI Infrastructure: Helps legacy data centers run AI without costly upgrades. AI inference technology startup Positron has raised USD 23.5 million in funding from a group of investors, including Flume Ventures, Valor Equity Partners, Atreides Management, and Resilience Reserve. The company aims to scale production of its US-manufactured AI chips, offering a cost-effective and energy-efficient alternative to Nvidia's AI hardware. Also Read: Fluidstack to Build AI Supercomputer in France with EUR 10 Billion Investment The company said it is already shipping products to data centers and neoclouds across the US, calling it a feat "that is almost insurmountable to chip startups with hundreds of millions or more in backing." Positron claims its Atlas systems delivers 3.5x better performance per dollar and 3.5x greater power efficiency than Nvidia's H100 GPUs for AI inference. Its memory-optimised architecture achieves over 93 percent bandwidth utilisation, significantly outperforming GPUs. These systems deliver 70 percent faster inference at 66 percent lower power consumption than H100/H200 setups, reducing data center capital expenditures by 50 percent. "Positron's FPGA-powered servers support trillion-parameter models while offering plug-and-play compatibility with Hugging Face and OpenAI APIs," the official release said. Beyond the specifications, the company highlighted that its first-generation Atlas systems are entirely designed, manufactured, and assembled in the US. "With this funding, we're scaling at a pace that AI hardware has never seen before-from expanding shipments of our first-generation products to bringing our second-generation accelerators to market in 2026," said Mitesh Agrawal, CEO of Positron. "Our solution is growing rapidly because it outperforms conventional GPUs in both cost and energy efficiency, while delivering AI hardware that eliminates reliance on foreign supply chains." Also Read: Government Plans to Bring Back Top Indian-Origin AI Experts for Local Innovation: Report Unlike many semiconductor companies that rely on offshore manufacturing, Positron said it has built a fully American supply chain, ensuring that its AI hardware is designed, fabricated, and assembled within the United States. "Investing in domestic AI hardware is a strategic imperative when it comes to securing America's global AI posture," said Scott McNealy, Operating Partner at Flume Ventures. "Positron is proving that world-class AI compute doesn't have to come from overseas, and we're excited to support their mission to make the US a leader in AI hardware manufacturing." Beyond cost savings, Positron said its technology is addressing the growing power constraints of AI infrastructure. "Many legacy data centers struggle to support high-power GPUs, which consume as much as 10,000 watts per server -- far beyond the capacity of traditional data centers. Positron's energy-efficient architecture allows these facilities to participate in AI computing without requiring massive infrastructure upgrades," the AI chip startup said. Also Read: LG and Tenstorrent Strengthen Partnership to Enhance AI Chip Capabilities "The demand for AI compute is skyrocketing, and enterprises are searching for viable alternatives that are energy and cost-efficient for the long term," said Rob Reid, Co-founder of Resilience Reserve. "What sets Positron apart is not just its cost efficiency, but its ability to bring AI hardware to market at an unprecedented speed and provide a high performance per watt. Their innovative approach is enabling businesses to scale AI workloads without the typical barriers of cost and power consumption."