Positron AI raises $875 million at a $5 billion valuation — Channel NewsAsia
In Singapore, startup Positron AI, which develops chips for running artificial intelligence models, announced that it had raised $875 million in a new investment round. The company’s valuation has increased more than fourfold in seven months, to $5 billion, Channel NewsAsia reports, citing Reuters.
According to PitchBook, Positron AI raised $230 million in February at a valuation of $1.06 billion. The company operates in the AI inference market—the running of already trained models—where developers of specialized processors are seeking to compete with Nvidia.
Two funding stages
The new round was divided into two parts. The $375 million Series C took place at a pre-money valuation of $3.5 billion. The second stage, Series C-1, provides for up to $500 million in investment; it was led by NEA and Jim Clark, the founder of Silicon Graphics.
Atreides Management, Valor Equity Partners, Andra Capital and SemiAnalysis Capital also became co-leads of the round. Other investors named include Qatar Investment Authority, Cisco Investments and Naver Ventures.
More current news is available on the UA.News Telegram channel Telegram.
Production of the Asimov chip
Positron AI plans to direct the funds raised toward the final stage of designing Asimov, its next-generation chip. The company expects to begin its production in the second half of 2027.
Positron AI said its Titan AI inference system will combine four to eight Asimov chips. According to the company, this configuration is expected to serve models with more than 16 trillion parameters and context windows of more than 10 million tokens on a single node.
The company also reported the deployment of more than 50 Atlas racks—its first-generation inference system—at Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. Positron’s board of directors will include Forest Baskett of NEA, Gavin Baker of Atreides Management, SemiAnalysis founder Dylan Patel, and Thomas Jermoluk of the Jim Clark Office.
