Matrix Capital Management, the largest investor in this round, has joined the board. The funding also attracted new investors including Intel Capital, MediaTek, Cambium Capital, CIDC, Capital TEN and Hotung Venture Group, as well as increased participation from existing investors Walden Catalyst, Dell Technologies Capital, Koch Disruptive Technologies and VentureTech Alliance.
According to the company, the funding will enable it to launch its first silicon product and meet growing customer demand by expanding manufacturing operations, platform hardware, software engineering and support functions.
“The rapid evolution of LLMs and merging with the data analytics stack makes it essential that accelerators are easy to program and debug, and that data can flow seamlessly between the processor and the accelerator. Rivos addresses this need with our recompile, not refactor, approach,” said Puneet Kumar, co-founder and CEO of Rivos. “I am grateful for Matrix’s vote of confidence in this approach and am pleased to welcome Romit to the Board of Directors.
Rivos provides power-optimized chips combining high-performance server-class RISC-V processors and a parallel data accelerator (a GPGPU optimized for large language models (LLM) and data analysis) that work with software programming models and the constraints of today’s rack servers.
Tight integration of CPU and parallel computing sharing uniform memory across DDR DRAM and HBM makes these devices suitable for today’s models and databases that require terabytes of memory.
Rivos is one of the leaders in the open RISC-V ecosystem. Calista Redmond, CEO of RISC-V International, commented: “Rivos has quickly become an active participant in the community. The depth of experience of Rivos engineers has put RISC-V ahead of the curve in ISA, system, and security specifications.
On the software side, Rivos was one of the instigators of the RISC-V Software Ecosystem (RISE) initiative.
“Expanding the application of data analytics and large language models to encompass not only traditional data types such as text, images and video, but also genomic and medical data, opens up opportunities unprecedented for innovation in research and treatment,” remarked David Goel, Managing Director. General partner of Matrix Capital Management. “The Rivos team has skillfully integrated the revolutionary new RISC-V architecture with an inventive accelerator, bringing this vision to life. Their prototype chip serves as a compelling demonstration of their unique ability to leverage the advanced TSMC 3nm process node – a feat few startups have managed to achieve.
