Research area
AI chip and compute startups
Labs whose thesis is the substrate: chip design, neuromorphic hardware, kernels. We track 5 labs in this area, which have raised $775M in disclosed rounds between them; the most valuable is Unconventional AI, at $4.5B.
5labs
$775Mdisclosed raised
$8.5Breported valuations
| Lab | Topic | Location | Founders from | Founded | Last round | Valuation | Raised | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unconventional AIBrain-inspired analog and neuromorphic compute substrates to escape the scaling crunch of …site · in | Compute & chips | San Francisco, US | ex-Databricks, ex-MIT, ex-Stanford, ex-Qualcomm | 2025 | Seed $475MDec 8, 2025 | $4.5B | $475M | Research only |
| Ricursive IntelligenceSelf-improving systems applied to chip design, from the AlphaChip creators; targets the 18…site · in | Compute & chips | Palo Alto, US | ex-Google DeepMind, ex-Anthropic | 2025 | Series A $300MJan 26, 2026 · Lightspeed | $4B | $300M | Research only |
| InferactCommercialising vLLM, from its creators.site · in | Compute & chips | Berkeley, US | ex-UC Berkeley | 2025 | · | $800Mest. | · | Open model |
| RadixArkCommercialising SGLang. | Compute & chips | Berkeley, US | ex-xAI, ex-UW | 2025 | · | $400Mest. | · | Open model |
| QUTWOQuantum and AI tooling; sovereign European compute.site · in | Compute & chips | Helsinki, FI | ex-AMD, ex-IQM | 2025 | · | $380Mest. | · | Research only |
News
-
Oct 5, 2026
+1 more coverage
- Yahoo Finance All-In Summit: Unconventional AI CEO Naveen Rao Debuts Hardware Optimizing Chips
-
Sep 25, 2026
- Aug 5, 2026
-
Jun 26, 2026
-
Jun 25, 2026
+1 more coverage
- AI Insider Unconventional AI Unveils Oscillator-Based Architecture Promising 1,000x Inference Effici…
- Jun 25, 2026
-
May 6, 2026
+1 more coverage
- finance.biggo.com Chip Titans Unite: NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel Jointly Invest $100 Million in Open-Source AI I…
- Feb 16, 2026
-
Jan 26, 2026
+4 more coverage
- Lightspeed Venture Partners Investing in Ricursive Intelligence: AI for Chip Design and Chip Design for AI
- Crunchbase News AI Lab Ricursive Intelligence Lands $300M Series A At $4B Valuation Less than Two Months …
- PR Newswire Ricursive Intelligence Raises $300 Million Series A at $4 Billion Valuation to Accelerate…
- Latham & Watkins LLP Watkins Advises Ricursive Intelligence in US$300 Million Series A Funding Round
-
Jan 23, 2026
-
Jan 22, 2026
+4 more coverage
- Andreessen Horowitz Investing in Inferact
- 36Kr vLLM Team Officially Launches Startup, Secures $150M in Financing with Tsinghua Special A…
- CryptoRank Inferact’s Revolutionary $150M Funding to Commercialize vLLM Transforms AI Inference Land…
- Pandaily vLLM Team Launches Startup Inferact, Raises $150M to Build AI Inference Engines
-
Jan 21, 2026
+2 more coverage
- CryptoRank AI Inference Optimization Explodes: RadixArk’s $400M Valuation Signals Massive Infrastruc…
- Tech Funding News From Berkeley lab to $400M startup: SGLang becomes RadixArk