AI chip startup MatX secures $500M to take on Nvidia

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

MatX says its mission is to build processors that are 10 times better than Nvidia’s GPUs at training large language models and serving results.

Additional participants in the round include Marvell Technology, NFDG, Spark Capital, and the co-founders of Stripe, Patrick and John Collison, according to a Tuesday LinkedIn post from MatX founder and CEO Reiner Pope.

The company did not disclose its new valuation. Bloomberg reported last month that Etched, viewed as MatX’s closest competitor, raised a $500 million round at a $5 billion valuation. Etched did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

MatX’s Series B arrives more than a year after its Series A of roughly $100 million, which Spark Capital led. Before launching MatX in 2023, Pope led AI software development for Google’s TPUs, the company’s in-house AI chips. His co-founder, Mike Gunter, served as a lead TPU hardware designer before departing to start the company.

MatX said the new capital will support manufacturing its chips with TSMC, with plans to begin shipping products in 2027.