Nvidia challenger AI chip startup MatX has raised $500 million

MatX, a chip startup founded by two former Google hardware engineers, has raised a $500 million Series B round led by Jane Street and Situational Awareness, a venture fund created by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner.

The company’s goal is to make its processors 10 times better at training and delivering results for LLM students than Nvidia’s GPUs.

Other investors in the round include Marvell Technology, NFDG, Spark Capital and Stripe co-founders Patrick Collison and John Collison, the startup’s founder and CEO, Rainer Popp, said Tuesday in a LinkedIn post.

Although the company has not released its latest valuation, MatX’s closest competitor, Etched, raised a $500 million round at a $5 billion valuation, Bloomberg reported last month. Etched did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

MatX’s latest round comes more than a year after its nearly $100 million Series A, which was led by Spark Capital. TechCrunch previously reported that the 2024 round valued the startup at more than $300 million.

Before co-founding MatX in 2023, Bob led AI software development for Google’s TPUs, the tech giant’s proprietary AI chips. His co-founder, Mike Gunter was one of the lead designers of TPU devices before leaving to launch the startup.

The new funding will help MatX produce its chips in collaboration with TSMC, with plans to start shipping them in 2027.