The AI inference chip startup Positron is in discussions with investors for a two-stage funding round totaling approximately $750 million, with a first-round valuation expected around $3.5 billion and a second-round valuation potentially reaching $5 billion.
If successfully completed, this would mark a more than tripling of the valuation for the three-year-old company within a span of five months.
Positron was founded in 2023 and is headquartered in Reno, Nevada, focusing on developing inference chips with leading energy efficiency for running AI models.
It is one of several startups challenging the market dominance of NVIDIA.
The company has previously raised about $309 million from investors including Arm Holdings, Qatar Investment Authority, Valor Equity Partners, and Atreides Management.
Positron touts the energy efficiency advantage of its main product—its Atlas inference system is already shipping to customers, with Cloudflare among the buyers.
The company claims its hardware delivers over 3.5 times the performance per watt compared to NVIDIA products for certain AI inference workloads.
The next-generation chip, codenamed Asimov, is planned for design finalization by the end of 2026, with mass production targeted for early 2027.
Investor interest in AI inference chips is rapidly intensifying.
AI deployment is shifting from the model training phase to the inference phase—the process where AI models respond to actual inputs—which is seen as the next major surge in demand for AI computing power.
Earlier this year, another AI chip startup, Etched, completed a $500 million funding round at a $5 billion valuation and secured approximately $1 billion in sales contracts.
However, the funding negotiations are still ongoing, and the terms are subject to change.
The talks for Positron's funding coincide with a period of high market enthusiasm for investments in AI infrastructure, yet its ability to carve out market space against the formidable dominance of NVIDIA remains to be proven.
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