Chips and AI computers

• Gavin Uberti: co-founder and CEO; Harvard dropout, ex-OctoML and ex-Xnor.ai (per TechCrunch) (TechCrunch, Jun 25, 2024)
• Chris Zhu: co-founder; Harvard dropout (per TechCrunch) (TechCrunch, Jun 25, 2024)
• Robert Wachen: co-founder and President (company page); Uberti's college roommate (per CNBC) (CNBC, Jun 25, 2024)

• Jun 25, 2024, Series A: $120 million. Investors named: Primary Venture Partners (co-lead), Positive Sum Ventures (co-lead), Peter Thiel, Thomas Dohmke, Kyle Vogt, Charlie Cheever (TechCrunch, Jun 25, 2024)
• Jan 13, 2026, unnamed (reported): about $500 million, valued at $5 billion. Investors named: Stripes (lead), Peter Thiel, Positive Sum, Ribbit Capital (Bloomberg, Jan 13, 2026)
• Jul 23, 2026, Series C: US$ 300 million, valued at US$ 10.3 billion. Investors named: Sequoia (lead), a16z, Jane Street, Diffusion, SK Hynix (W.Media, Jul 27, 2026)
• Aug 18, 2026, unnamed (company calls it new funding): $700M, valued at $21B. Investors named: Jane Street (lead), Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia, Andreessen Horowitz, Tiger Global, Bain Capital Ventures, Neo, Primary, Stripes, Positive Sum, Blackstone (Etched press release (GlobeNewswire), Aug 18, 2026)

• Jane Street, its first customer and lead investor, said: "We're excited to now have our own rack running in our data center." (customer statement in a company release, not an independent test) (Etched press release (GlobeNewswire), Aug 18, 2026)

Founding year not stated on any fetched page: TechCrunch and CNBC (June 2024) called it two years old, which points to about 2022. Etched says it has 'secured more than $1B in customer contracts'; only Jane Street is named. The $5B round was reported by Bloomberg from people familiar. The Series C figures come from a trade site citing the company's release. The company homepage also mentions $800M raised across four financings, which does not match the $700M banner figure.

• Thomas Sohmers: co-founder and CTO; a Thiel Fellow (per company release) (Positron press release (Business Wire), Feb 11, 2025)
• Edward Kmett: co-founder and Chief Scientist; mathematician and functional programming expert (per company release) (Positron press release (Business Wire), Feb 11, 2025)

• Feb 11, 2025, unnamed: $23.5 million. Investors named: Flume Ventures, Valor Equity Partners, Atreides Management, Resilience Reserve (Positron press release (Business Wire), Feb 11, 2025)
• Feb 4, 2026, Series B: $230 million, valued at $1 billion (Reuters later cited $1.06 billion per PitchBook). Investors named: Arena Private Wealth (co-lead), Jump Trading (co-lead), Unless (co-lead), Qatar Investment Authority (TechCrunch, Feb 4, 2026)
• Sep 10, 2026, Series C and C-1: $875 million total ($375 million Series C plus a Series C-1 of up to $500 million), valued at $5 billion ($3.5 billion pre-money for the Series C). Investors named: NEA (co-lead), Atreides Management (co-lead), Valor Equity Partners (co-lead), Andra Capital (co-lead), SemiAnalysis Capital (co-lead), Jim Clark (co-lead), Qatar Investment Authority, Cisco Investments, Naver Ventures (Reuters, Sep 10, 2026)

• Jump Trading's CTO said Atlas 'delivered roughly 3x lower end-to-end latency than a comparable H100-based system' in its testing. Jump Trading co-led the Series B, so this is a customer-investor claim, not independent. (StorageNewsletter (Positron release), Feb 6, 2026)

Founding year from the company's own phrase 'since launching in 2023'. Positron's press page also lists a '$50M+ Series A' in June 2025 (Business Wire sidebar says $51.6 million); not detailed here. CEO is Mitesh Agrawal, formerly of Lambda; he is not described as a founder.

• Naveen Rao: former head of AI at Databricks; co-founded Nervana Systems (bought by Intel) and MosaicML (bought by Databricks) (per TechCrunch) (TechCrunch, Dec 9, 2025)
• Sara Achour: named as a founder in a Bloomberg photo caption; background not stated (Bloomberg, Dec 8, 2025)
• MeeLan Lee: named as a founder in a Bloomberg photo caption; background not stated (Bloomberg, Dec 8, 2025)
• Michael Carbin: named as a founder in a Bloomberg photo caption; background not stated (Bloomberg, Dec 8, 2025)

• Dec 9, 2025, Seed: $475 million (first installment toward a goal of up to $1 billion), valued at $4.5 billion. Investors named: Andreessen Horowitz (co-lead), Lightspeed (co-lead), Lux Capital, DCVC, Databricks, Jeff Bezos (TechCrunch, Dec 9, 2025)

Founding year is inferred: Bloomberg called it 'A two-month-old startup' in December 2025. No hardware exists in public yet; TechCrunch says the company 'plans to release schematics for an actual chip soon'. Bloomberg's piece did not show a publication date in the fetched text; the date is taken from its URL.

• Anna Goldie: co-founder and CEO; worked on AI for chip design at Google DeepMind and created AlphaChip (per Crunchbase News) (Crunchbase News, Jan 26, 2026)
• Azalia Mirhoseini: co-founder and CTO; worked on AI for chip design at Google DeepMind and created AlphaChip (per Crunchbase News) (Crunchbase News, Jan 26, 2026)

• Dec 2025, Seed: $35 million, valued at $750 million. Investors named: Sequoia Capital (lead) (Crunchbase News, Jan 26, 2026)
• Jan 26, 2026, Series A: $300 million, valued at $4 billion. Investors named: Lightspeed Venture Partners (lead), DST Global, NVentures (Nvidia), Felicis Ventures, 49 Palms, Radical Ventures, Sequoia Capital (Crunchbase News, Jan 26, 2026)

Uses AI to design chips rather than selling a chip; included in chips as a judgment call. Founded 'late last year' per DCD (January 2026). Searched for 2026 product news and found only funding coverage.

• Reiner Pope: founder and CEO; previously led AI software development for Google's TPUs (per TechCrunch) (TechCrunch, Feb 24, 2026)
• Mike Gunter: co-founder; a lead designer of TPU hardware at Google (per TechCrunch) (TechCrunch, Feb 24, 2026)

• 2024, Series A: about $100 million, valued at more than $300 million. Investors named: Spark Capital (lead) (TechCrunch, Feb 24, 2026)
• Feb 24, 2026, Series B: $500 million. Investors named: Jane Street (co-lead), Situational Awareness (co-lead), Marvell Technology, NFDG, Spark Capital, Patrick Collison, John Collison (TechCrunch, Feb 24, 2026)

Valuation for the Series B was not disclosed. No chip has shipped; TechCrunch says shipments are planned to start in 2027. Searched TechCrunch coverage and funding news only; did not find a public product page or paper.

• Walter Goodwin: founded it as 'a then PhD student at the University of Oxford's Robotics Institute' (per DCD) (DCD (DatacenterDynamics), Feb 10, 2026)

• May 13, 2026, Series B: $220m. Investors named: Accel (co-lead), Founders Fund (co-lead), Factorial Funds (co-lead), Gigascale, Conviction, Buckley Ventures, O1A, 8VC, Felicis (Verdict (via Yahoo Finance); also Bloomberg 2026-05-13, May 14, 2026)

No valuation was stated in fetched coverage. The company's site says it is 'building the first of a new generation of processors' and claims up to 25x faster inference at 1/10th the cost (company claim, no product yet). In February 2026 it announced a £100 million UK investment over three years (DCD). Searched company site, DCD, Bloomberg and Verdict coverage; no shipped chip found.

• Fabrizio Del Maffeo: CEO and co-founder (per IO+); prior background not stated (IO+, Feb 24, 2026)

• Feb 24, 2026, unnamed: more than $250 million (EIC headline says more than €200 million). Investors named: Innovation Industries (lead), BlackRock, SiteGround Capital, Bitfury, CDP Venture Capital, EIC Fund, SFPIM, Invest-NL, Samsung Catalyst Fund, Verve Investments (IO+, Feb 24, 2026)

• The EU's European Innovation Council Fund invested and says Axelera has 'deployed across more than 500 customers' (figure from the company) (European Innovation Council, Feb 24, 2026)

Total funding is over $450 million counting equity, grants and venture debt (IO+). No valuation reported in fetched sources. Older and smaller than US peers by valuation; included as the largest EU AI chip round reported.

• Wang Zhan: co-CEO; Baidu founding-team member (per KrASIA) (KrASIA (from 36Kr), Sep 23, 2025)
• Wang Yong: co-CEO; about 20 years at AMD and Baidu's Kunlunxin (per KrASIA) (KrASIA (from 36Kr), Sep 23, 2025)

• Jul 1, 2025, unnamed: nearly 1 billion yuan ($139.6 million). Investors named: Sany Group venture capital unit, 4Paradigm (Caixin Global, Jul 1, 2025)
• Jan 29, 2026, strategic financing (cumulative over 12 months, not one round): nearly 3 billion yuan ($431.4 million). Investors named: IDG Capital, Soul Capital, Gaorong Ventures, CICC Capital, Puhua Capital, Green Pine Capital Partners, Yuexiu Industrial Fund, state capital platforms (Caixin Global, Jan 29, 2026)
• Apr 21, 2026, unnamed: more than 1 billion yuan ($140 million) (Caixin Global, Apr 21, 2026)

Founded year is the spin-off from SenseTime at the end of 2024; SenseTime's chip effort began about five years earlier (KrASIA). Caixin articles are paywalled, so only the visible parts were checked. No valuation found. A Caixin page sidebar says the S3 chip was released in January 2026, but that sidebar is labelled AI-generated, so it is not used.