Nvidia challenger AI chip startup MatX raised $500M

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

The company’s goal is to make its processors ten times better at training LLMs and delivering results 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 Reiner Pope announced in a press release on Tuesday. post on LinkedIn.

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

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

Before co-founder MatX in 2023, Pope led the development of AI software for Google’s TPUs, the tech giant’s proprietary AI chips. Its co-founder, Mike Gunter, was a lead designer of the TPU hardware before leaving to launch the startup.

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