Key facts
- Positron AI raised $875 million in its latest funding round.
- The startup's valuation increased to $5 billion, more than quadrupling from $1.06 billion in February.
- The financing included a $375 million Series C at a $3.5 billion pre-money valuation and a Series C-1 of up to $500 million.
- Proceeds will fund the final design stage of Positron's next-generation chip, Asimov, targeting production in the second half of 2027.
- Positron is deploying over 50 racks of its first-generation inference system, Atlas, at Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
Positron AI, a startup focused on developing specialized chips for artificial intelligence models, announced on Thursday that it has secured $875 million in its latest funding round, propelling its valuation to $5 billion. This represents a significant increase from its February valuation of $1.06 billion, achieved just seven months prior.
The company's latest financing was structured in two parts: a $375 million Series C at a $3.5 billion pre-money valuation and a Series C-1 tranche of up to $500 million. The round was co-led by NEA and Jim Clark, founder of Silicon Graphics, with participation from other investors including Atreides Management, Valor Equity Partners, Andra Capital, SemiAnalysis Capital, Qatar Investment Authority, Cisco Investments, and Naver Ventures.
Funds from this round will be allocated to the final design phase of Positron's next-generation chip, codenamed Asimov, with production targeted for the second half of 2027. The company's AI inference system, Titan, is designed to integrate four to eight Asimov chips to handle models exceeding 16 trillion parameters and context windows beyond 10 million tokens within a single node.
Positron is also actively deploying its first-generation inference system, Atlas, with over 50 racks being utilized at Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. As part of the financing agreement, Forest Baskett of NEA, Gavin Baker of Atreides Management, Dylan Patel of SemiAnalysis, and Thomas Jermoluk from Jim Clark's office will join Positron's board of directors.