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Naveen Rao, the former head of AI at Databricks, has raised $475 million in seed capital at a $4.5 billion valuation for his new startup, Unconventional AI<\/a>.<\/p>\n The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed Ventures, with participation from Lux Capital and DCVC. The funding is a first installment toward the goal of up to $1 billion for the round, Rao told Bloomberg<\/a>.<\/p>\n TechCrunch was first to report, back in October, that Unconventional AI was seeking this mega funding<\/a> for Rao\u2019s new startup, although the final valuation is marginally lower than the $5 billion sources told us he was seeking. If he does eventually raise as much as $1 billion, we\u2019ll see how that impacts his company\u2019s value.<\/p>\n Unconventional AI is set on building a new, energy-efficient computer for AI. Rao previously wrote on X<\/a> that his goal is to create a computer that is \u201cas efficient as biology.\u201d<\/p>\n Databricks acquired Rao\u2019s previous startup,\u00a0MosaicML in 2023<\/a>, for $1.3 billion. Prior to MosaicML, Rao co-founded the machine learning platform\u00a0Nervana Systems<\/a>, which Intel Corp. acquired in 2016 for reportedly<\/a> more than $400 million.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n