Rivos secures over $250m to accelerate RISC-V based platforms for AI and data analytics

Rivos, a pioneering RISC-V accelerated platform company focused on data analytics and Generative AI, has successfully raised over $250 million in an oversubscribed Series A-3 funding round. This substantial financial backing marks a critical phase in Rivos’s growth, as it prepares to tape out its first silicon product and expand its manufacturing operations. Matrix Capital Management, the largest investor in this round, has intensified its involvement by placing Romit Shah on Rivos’s Board.

The funding round drew significant interest, attracting new investors including Intel Capital, MediaTek, Cambium Capital, CIDC, Capital TEN, and Hotung Venture Group, alongside increased contributions from existing backers such as Walden Catalyst, Dell Technologies Capital, Koch Disruptive Technologies, and VentureTech Alliance. This influx of capital will support Rivos’s strategic initiatives across hardware, software engineering, and platform support functions to meet growing customer demands.

At the heart of Rivos’s innovation is its high-performance server-class RISC-V CPUs integrated with a Data Parallel Accelerator, optimized for handling large language models (LLMs) and extensive data analytics. This integration enables seamless data movement between CPU and accelerator, essential for modern applications that require vast memory capacities. “The rapid changes in LLMs and the merger with the data analytics stack makes it vital that accelerators be easy to program and debug,” explained Puneet Kumar, co-founder and CEO of Rivos. He emphasized the importance of their recompile-not-redesign approach, which simplifies the programming process.

Rivos Raises Significant Funding for Advanced Silicon Development

Rivos has quickly become a key player in the RISC-V open ecosystem, contributing to advances in instruction set architecture (ISA), system, and security specifications. Calista Redmond, CEO of RISC-V International, praised the depth of experience Rivos engineers bring to the community. The company’s efforts also include spearheading the RISC-V Software Ecosystem (RISE) initiative, further establishing its leadership in this transformative technology space.

David Goel, Managing General Partner of Matrix Capital Management, highlighted the broader implications of Rivos’s technology, stating, “Expanding the application of data analytics and large language models to encompass not just traditional data types such as text, images, and video, but also genomic and medical data, unlocks unprecedented opportunities for innovation in research and treatment.” Rivos’s prototype chip, leveraging the advanced TSMC 3nm process node, demonstrates the company’s unique capabilities and potential for future achievements in the tech industry.

Rivos’s recent funding success is a testament to the confidence investors have in its innovative approach to integrating RISC-V architecture with advanced accelerator technology. The company is positioned to make significant contributions to the semiconductor industry, particularly in areas demanding high computational efficiency and power optimization. As Rivos moves forward with its ambitious projects, the tech industry should watch closely for its potential to redefine performance standards in AI and data analytics platforms.