Low-energy chip startup Efficient Computer closes on $97M in funding

Efficient Computer Co., a low-energy chip startup, has successfully closed a $97 million funding round, marking its second significant investment this year. The investment lead was provided by TQ Ventures, with participation from Eclipse, Union Square Ventures, Giant Ventures, Triatomic Capital, TO Capital, TF Capital, Mana Ventures, Toyota Ventures, Overmatch, and Borderless.

This brings the company's total funding raised to a staggering $650 million. Efficient is developing an innovative, energy-efficient computer chip based on data flow architecture, which claims to reduce energy consumption by up to 100 times compared to x86 chip architecture used by Intel and AMD.

The company's first chips are designed for small robots and autonomous drones, running on batteries instead of a power supply. Efficient's co-founder and CEO, Brandon Lucia, argues that modern chips sacrifice programmability and adaptability for efficiency and speed, which limits their usefulness to a narrow subset of tasks. Efficient's data flow architecture eliminates unnecessary data movement and architectural overheads, potentially leading to significant gains in performance per watt.

The funds from the latest round will be used to scale production volumes and increase shipments to customers. TQ Ventures partner Andrew Marks believes in Efficient's ability to build both hardware and software, turning its breakthrough into a viable business. While Efficient has not disclosed any customer names or revenue details, Lucia claims the company is experiencing overwhelming demand for its Electron E1 chip.