Oxide raises $445M on profitability and AI demand

Oxide Computer Company has secured $445 million in a Series D funding round, bolstered by a strong demand for its profitability-focused on-premises cloud computing solutions and the expanding AI industry. The Emeryville, California-based firm, led by Eclipse, saw participation from existing investors including US Innovative Technology Fund, Riot Ventures, and Jane Street, as well as new investors Atreides Management and AMD Ventures.

Reaching profitability earlier this year, Oxide has faced increased customer demand that outstrips its current production capacity. The funding round provides the company with crucial working capital to secure components, expand manufacturing capabilities, and meet its growing customer base.

Oxide has ramped up its manufacturing capacity by a remarkable 20 times over the past year, positioning itself to meet the surging demand for its innovative technology. Co-founder and CEO Steve Tuck emphasized the funding's role in enabling the company to invest in materials and scale up manufacturing.

CTO and co-founder Bryan Cantrill explained that Oxide's inception in 2019 was driven by the anticipation of growing demand for organizations to own and operate their own compute infrastructure. The company's Oxide Cloud Computer is a rack-scale integrated system, featuring purpose-built hardware and open-source software. This system combines hyperscale cloud architecture with enterprise data center components, co-designing compute, storage, networking, and software as a single system.

The demand for CPU-based systems is accelerating as AI transitions from generating answers to executing work, according to Seth Winterroth, a partner at Eclipse. Sagi Paz, Head of AMD Ventures, highlighted Oxide's systems-level approach, which provides customers with more options as computing needs become increasingly complex.