Chip designer Velaura AI valued at more than $1 billion in funding round

Velaura AI, a chip-designing startup, recently secured $110 million in a Series A funding round, valuing the company at over $1 billion. The investment was led by Seligman Ventures, with participation from new investor Capricorn Investment Group and existing investors Samsung Catalyst Fund, StepStone Group and Maverick Silicon.

Velaura AI specializes in developing low-power chips and software technologies for data centers and physical AI applications, including robotics and autonomous systems. The company claims its technology can significantly reduce power consumption and operating costs in AI data centers. Velaura's CEO, Rajiv Khemani, stated that the funds will be used to accelerate the development and deployment of its AI products, as well as hire engineers and customer-facing staff.

Earlier this year, Velaura unveiled Titan Core, its proprietary chip-design platform aimed at enhancing efficiency and power savings in data center workloads. Khemani emphasized that the next generation of AI will not only be defined by better models but also by fundamentally better compute economics. Velaura AI has already formed partnerships with three of the four largest cloud computing providers as potential customers, though the specific companies were not disclosed. The company reports that its technology has been implemented in more than 30 million chips.

Velaura AI's licensing model for its technology resembles Arm's per-chip pricing scheme before it began manufacturing its own chips. Umesh Padval, managing partner at Seligman Ventures, which led the investment, noted that Velaura AI is well-positioned to capitalize on the increasing power demands of AI data centers and the growing demand for energy-efficient computing in robotics.