The newly minted chipmaking startup AheadComputing Inc. said today it has raised $21.5 million in seed funding to develop and commercialize a new artificial intelligence chipset based on the open-source architecture RISC-V.

Today’s round was led by Eclipse and saw participation from a host of other investors, including Maverick Capital, Fundomo and EPIQ Capital Group, as well as the chief executive of Tenstorrent Inc., Jim Keller, who previously developed cutting-edge chips for Apple Inc., Intel Corp. and Tesla Inc., among others.

The startup was launched in 2024 by a host of former Intel central processing unit architects, including Debbie Marr, Jonathon Pearce, Mark Dechene and Srikanth Srinivasan, who boast more than a century of experience in chip design.

They’re aiming to tackle some of the most pressing challenges around general-purpose computing posed by the emergence of AI and machine learning workloads. Citing a recent report from Flexential Corp., they say that 82% of all organizations have come up against performance issues with their AI workloads in the last year.

These problems stem from the bandwidth shortages and data processing limitations of general-purpose processors, which are still vitally important for AI workloads. While the high-powered graphics processing units get all of the headlines, traditional CPUs still play an important role, handling tasks before, after and during AI operations. Yet CPU architectures have struggled to keep up with the demands of the most advanced AI workloads, resulting in a bottleneck that AheadComputing hopes to solve.

The startup’s founders say they’re aiming to develop 64-bit RISC-V processors that can deliver enhanced per-core performance, allowing them to meet the increased demand for enhanced general-purpose computing resources.

AheadComputing CEO Marr told Reuters in an interview that the company opted to create chips based on the RISC-V architecture because it avoids the pitfalls of the x86 architectures used by companies such as Intel and Advanced Micro Devices Inc., or the Arm-based designs made by the British chip designer Arm Holdings Ltd.

“The RISC-V ecosystem is open, it’s not owned, it’s not controlled by one company,” Marr said. “There are hundreds of players. There is plenty of room for innovation.”

The startup hasn’t yet said much at all about its technology, but it insists that its new RISC-V CPUs will deliver breakthrough gains in terms of power-efficiency in order to overcome the bottlenecks presently seen in AI and server-based applications.

Specifically, the company is working on improving per-core performance, thermal density constraints and multiprocessor scalability. It says its first chips will deliver industry-leading single-thread and multi-core performance and set new benchmarks in the CPU industry.

Looking ahead, the funds from today’s round will be used to demonstrate how it can improve CPU core performance. As part of that initiative, it will also expand its engineering teams, Marr said.

Greg Reichow, a partner at Eclipse, said AheadComputing’s leadership team is uniquely positioned to solve the most complex challenges facing the computing industry today. “As esteemed former senior Intel architects, their commitment to delivering the highest performance cores, while ensuring energy efficiency, will significantly impact multiple industries, like mobile, industrial and networking,” he said.

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