{"id":106398,"date":"2026-02-25T10:02:15","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T10:02:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/25\/nvidia-challenger-ai-chip-startup-matx-raised-500m\/"},"modified":"2026-02-25T10:02:15","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T10:02:15","slug":"nvidia-challenger-ai-chip-startup-matx-raised-500m","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/25\/nvidia-challenger-ai-chip-startup-matx-raised-500m\/","title":{"rendered":"Nvidia challenger AI chip startup MatX raised $500M"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p id=\"speakable-summary\" class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">MatX, a chip startup founded by two former Google hardware engineers, has raised a $500 million Series B led by Jane Street and Situational Awareness, an investment fund formed by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The company\u2019s goal is to make its processors 10 times better at training LLMs and delivering results than Nvidia\u2019s GPUs. \u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Other investors in the round include Marvell Technology, NFDG, Spark Capital, and Stripe co-founders Patrick Collison and John Collison, the startup\u2019s founder and CEO Reiner Pope announced Tuesday in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/posts\/reiner-pope-08064345_were-building-an-llm-chip-that-delivers-activity-7432121445289328641-7C_R?utm_source=social_share_send&amp;utm_medium=member_desktop_web&amp;rcm=ACoAAAERmzIBOFgNvRHWUny-3IuRn0I3lovo2tU\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">post on LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Although the company didn\u2019t release its latest valuation, Etched, MatX\u2019s closest competitor, raised a $500 million round at a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2026-01-13\/ai-chip-startup-etched-raises-500-million-to-take-on-nvidia\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">$5 billion valuation<\/a>, Bloomberg reported last month. Etched didn\u2019t immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">MatX\u2019s latest round comes more than a year after its Series A of about $100 million, which was led by Spark Capital. TechCrunch earlier reported that the 2024 round valued the startup at more than <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2024\/11\/22\/ai-chip-startup-matx-founded-by-google-alums-raises-series-a-at-300m-valuation-sources-say\/\">$300 million<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Before co-founding <a href=\"https:\/\/matx.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">MatX<\/a> in 2023, Pope led AI software development for Google\u2019s TPUs, the tech giant\u2019s proprietary AI chips. His co-founder, Mike Gunter, was a lead designer of the TPU hardware before leaving to launch the startup.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The new funding will help MatX produce its chips with TSMC, with plans to start shipping them in 2027.<\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-techcrunch-inline-cta\">\n<div class=\"inline-cta__wrapper\">\n<p>Techcrunch event<\/p>\n<div class=\"inline-cta__content\">\n<p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"inline-cta__location\">Boston, MA<\/span><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"inline-cta__separator\">|<\/span><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"inline-cta__date\">June 9, 2026<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2026\/02\/24\/nvidia-challenger-ai-chip-startup-matx-raised-500m\/\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>MatX, a chip startup founded by two former Google hardware engineers, has raised a $500 million Series B led by Jane Street and Situational Awareness,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":106399,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[149],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-106398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/106399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neclink.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}