Nvidia competitor MatX, an AI chip startup, secured $500 million in funding

MatX Secures $500 Million in Series B Funding

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MatX, a semiconductor company established by two former Google hardware experts, has successfully closed a $500 million Series B funding round. The investment was spearheaded by Jane Street and Situational Awareness, a fund created by ex-OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner.

The startup is focused on developing processors that can outperform Nvidia’s GPUs, aiming to achieve a tenfold improvement in both large language model (LLM) training and inference capabilities.

Key Investors

• Marvell Technology
• NFDG
• Spark Capital
• Patrick Collison and John Collison, co-founders of Stripe

Reiner Pope, MatX’s founder and CEO, shared the news on Tuesday.

While MatX has not disclosed its current valuation, its main rival, Etched, recently raised $500 million at a $5 billion valuation last month. Etched has not yet commented on the news.

This latest investment comes over a year after MatX’s $100 million Series A, which was led by Spark Capital. TechCrunch previously reported that the 2024 funding round valued MatX at over $300 million.

Background of the Founders

Before launching MatX in 2023, Reiner Pope was responsible for leading AI software development for Google’s Tensor Processing Units (TPUs). His co-founder, Mike Gunter, previously served as the lead hardware designer for the TPU project before departing to co-found MatX.

Future Plans

With this new capital, MatX intends to manufacture its chips in partnership with TSMC and expects to begin shipping products in 2027.