Rivos Races to Raise $500M to Challenge Nvidia in AI Chip Wars

AI semiconductor startup Rivos, backed by Intel CEO Patrick Gelsinger, is advancing a substantial $500 million fundraising round to contend with chip industry leader Nvidia. If successful, this latest funding endeavor will bring Rivos' total fundraising to nearly $900 million since its inception in 2021, elevating its valuation to over $2 billion. Sources indicate that while the company has yet to mass-produce its chips, it aims to achieve this milestone by 2026, potentially capturing a portion of Nvidia's market share. Earlier this year, Rivos delivered prototype chips to TSMC for trial production.

Headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Rivos specializes in designing GPUs tailored for inference—a critical stage of AI involving the execution of trained models. By 2030, inference workloads are projected to comprise 60% to 70% of all AI tasks. Rivos is striving to create server solutions based on the RISC-V architecture that balance energy efficiency, performance, and security.

Patrick Gelsinger serves as a pivotal investor and the founding chairman of Rivos. Last year, the company completed a $250 million funding round. At the time, Rivos co-founder and CEO Puneet Kumar commented that Nvidia's offerings might be overly redundant for smaller deployment scenarios, which Rivos sees as a strategic market opportunity.

Kumar, who previously worked at a chip design firm acquired by Apple, founded Rivos in 2021. In the same year, Apple accused Rivos of stealing trade secrets, but Rivos counter-sued, claiming illegal threats against its employees. The dispute was settled in early 2024.

Rivos has attracted investment from notable firms and institutions, including Intel Capital, MediaTek, Dell Technologies, BlackRock, and Walden Catalyst. Chairman Gelsinger has consistently funneled funds through the Walden Catalyst Fund, aiming to develop a comprehensive ecosystem rooted in software-defined hardware, addressing the current challenges posed by RISC-V's relatively underdeveloped software environment.