Velaura AI Secures $110M Series A Funding, Achieves $1 Billion Valuation with Power-Efficient Chips

Chip designer Velaura AI valued at more than $1 billion after funding round

Aug 18 (Reuters) - Velaura AI was valued at more than $1 billion on Tuesday after raising $110 million in a Series A funding round, with investors backing the startup's chip design technology for lowering power consumption and operating costs at AI data centers. The funding round was led by Seligman Ventures, with participation from new investor ⁠Capricorn Investment Group. Existing investors Samsung Catalyst Fund, StepStone Group and Maverick Silicon also participated. Here are some details: Reporting by Prathik Jayaprakash in Bengaluru; Editing by Tasim Zahid Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab

Velaura AI raises $110M Series A, hits $1B valuation

Velaura AI raised $110 million in a Series A funding round on Tuesday, crossing a $1 billion valuation on the strength of investor interest in its approach to cutting power consumption in AI data centers and physical AI applications such as robotics and autonomous systems. Seligman Ventures led the round, with new investors Capricorn Investment Group and Prosperity7 Ventures also participating, the company said. Existing backers Mayfield, Maverick Silicon, MARA, Premji Invest, Samsung Catalyst Fund, and StepStone Group also took part. Velaura said it will use the capital to accelerate development and commercialization of its AI chip products, including its Titan Core silicon platform, and to expand its engineering and customer-facing teams. The company's central argument is that AI infrastructure is now constrained less by demand for compute and more by the electrical power needed to support it. Velaura's Titan Core platform, a proprietary chip design system, delivers a 2-4x improvement in performance per watt for mathematical operations in AI accelerators, the company said. The underlying technology has been deployed in more than 30 million ASICs, according to the company. "The next era of AI will be defined not only by better models, but also by fundamentally better compute economics," Rajiv Khemani, co-founder and CEO of Velaura AI, said in a statement. Velaura's leadership team includes executives and engineers from Apple $AAPL, Nvidia $NVDA, Google $GOOGL, Qualcomm $QCOM, and Marvell, the company said. Mayfield Managing Partner Navin Chaddha noted in a statement that the round marks his firm's fourth investment partnership with Rajiv Khemani and its second with co-founder Manu Gulati. Umesh Padval, managing partner at lead investor Seligman Ventures, said in a statement that Velaura's combination of low-power silicon expertise and technology already deployed in production at scale drove its decision to lead the round. "Physical AI represents one of the next major frontiers for AI, and it will require a fundamentally different approach to compute centered on extreme power efficiency," Umesh Padval said. Capricorn Investment Group Managing Partner Dipender Saluja pointed to the company's commercial validation as a key factor. "Velaura is attacking that problem at its root -- the silicon itself -- with technology that has shipped at scale," Dipender Saluja said in a statement. Velaura is headquartered in Santa Clara, California.

Velaura AI raises $110M to develop power-efficient AI chips

Velaura AI Inc., a developer of low-power artificial intelligence chips, today announced that it has raised $110 million in funding. Seligman Ventures led the Series A round. It was joined by Samsung Catalyst Fund, Mayfield and more than a half-dozen others. Velaura is now valued at over $1 billion. The deal comes six months after the company changed its market focus and brand. Velaura was earlier known as Auradine and developed Bitcoin mining chips. The company's most advanced crypto processor, the liquid-cooled Teraflux AH3880, can perform up to 600 trillion computations per second. A feature called EnergyTune enables the chip to lower its energy usage when grid capacity is limited. In March, Velaura shifted its focus from crypto accelerators to a new offering called Titan Core. It's a suite of processor building blocks and professional services designed to help customers develop AI chips. Like the company's Teraflux AH3880 crypto accelerator, Titan Core places an emphasis on energy efficiency. Large language models use mathematical operations called matrix multiplications to generate prompt responses. According to Velaura, such calculations and certain related operations can account for up to 70% of an AI chip's power usage. It claims that Titan Core reduces the amount of energy required for those calculations by a factor of two to four. That can translate to savings of up to $1,300 per chip over three years. "Every advance in AI, from reasoning models to embodied intelligence, creates demand for more compute, and ultimately more power," said Velaura Chief Executive Officer Rajiv Khemani (pictured, right, with the company's other co-founders). "The next era of AI will be defined not only by better models, but also by fundamentally better compute economics." Chip designers assemble processor designs from building blocks called cells. A cell is a set of transistors designed to perform a specific task such as storing bits. Titan Core includes a cell library, a collection of pre-packaged cell designs that removes the need for customers to develop everything from scratch. Velaura says that the modules are optimized to operate at low voltage. Customers with more advanced requirements can commission custom low-voltage circuits. According to Velaura, chip teams only need to provide an RTL file that describes the processor they wish to design. An RTL file is a kind of high-level processor blueprint that doesn't specify how cells should be implemented. The company also provides customers with what it describes as a "proprietary toolflow." It's a collection of technical assets that help engineers increase the reliability and manufacturing yield of their chips. Velaura says that Titan Core supports multiple manufacturing processes including the chip industry's latest three- and two-nanometer nodes. The company disclosed today that it's working with multiple hyperscalers on chip projects that use those technologies. Beyond the data center market, it sees customers using its low-voltage chip technology to develop processors for edge devices. Velaura will use its new funding to accelerate engineering initiatives and grow its customer-facing teams.

Chip designer Velaura AI valued at more than $1 billion in funding round

The funding round was led by Seligman Ventures, with participation from new investor Capricorn ⁠Investment ⁠Group. Existing investors Samsung Catalyst Fund, StepStone Group and Maverick Silicon also participated. Velaura AI said on Tuesday it raised $110 million in a Series A funding round that valued the chip-designing startup at more than $1 billion, with investors backing its technology that can lower power consumption and operating costs at AI data centers. The funding round was led by Seligman Ventures, with participation from new investor Capricorn ⁠Investment ⁠Group. Existing investors Samsung Catalyst Fund, StepStone Group and Maverick Silicon also participated. Here are some details: Velaura AI develops low-power chips and software technologies for data centers and so-called physical AI applications, including robotics and autonomous systems. The startup said the funds will be used to speed up development and deployment of its AI products and hire engineers ⁠and customer-facing staff. Earlier this year, Velaura announced Titan Core, its proprietary chip-design platform targeting greater efficiency and power savings in data ⁠center workloads. "The next era of AI will be defined not only by better models, but also by fundamentally better compute economics," Rajiv Khemani, co-founder and CEO of Velaura AI, said in a statement. Velaura is engaged with three of the four largest cloud computing providers as potential customers, Khemani told Reuters, but he declined to name them. The company said its technology has already been deployed in more than 30 million chips. The startup charges an upfront fee for its technology, plus a royalty tied to a ⁠share of the power savings customers achieve - a structure Khemani confirmed is similar to Arm's per-chip licensing model before it started selling its own chips. Umesh Padval, managing partner at Seligman Ventures, which led the investment, said Velaura was positioned to benefit from both the rising power demands of AI data centers and growing demand for energy-efficient computing in robotics.

Chip designer Velaura AI valued at more than $1 billion after funding round

Aug 18 (Reuters) - Velaura AI was valued at more than $1 billion on Tuesday after raising $110 million in a Series A funding round, with investors backing the startup's chip design technology for lowering power consumption and operating costs at AI data centers. The funding round was led by Seligman Ventures, with participation from new investor Capricorn Investment Group. Existing investors Samsung Catalyst Fund, StepStone Group and Maverick Silicon also participated. Here are some details: o Velaura AI develops low-power chips and software technologies for data centers and so-called physical AI applications, including robotics and autonomous systems. o The startup said the funds will be used to speed up development and deployment of its AI products and hire more engineers and customer-facing staff. o Earlier this year, Velaura announced Titan Core, its proprietary chip design platform targeting greater efficiency and power savings in data center workloads. o "The next era of AI will be defined not only by better models, but also by fundamentally better compute economics," Rajiv Khemani, co-founder and CEO of Velaura AI, said in a statement. (Reporting by Prathik Jayaprakash in Bengaluru; Editing by Tasim Zahid)