Data center infrastructure startup TensorWave raises $350M to help break Nvidia’s AI chip monopoly
Cloud-based artificial intelligence infrastructure startup TensorWave Inc. said today it has closed on a bumper $350 million Series B funding round as it strives to meet demand for an alternative to Nvidia Corp.’s graphics processing units. The round was co-led by Magnetar and AMD Ventures, the venture capital arm of the chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices Inc. Maverick Silicon, Nexus Venture Partners and Western Frontier also participated in the round, which brings TensorWave’s valuation to $1.55 billion.
The startup is notable for its refusal to have anything to do with Nvidia. It provides access to specialized, high-performance cloud infrastructure such as AI accelerators, renting this to customers who need resources for both training and inference. But uniquely, it relies exclusively on chips and software made by AMD.
TensorWave is quite the outlier, because virtually everyone in the AI industry is scrambling to get their hands made on Nvidia’s GPUs. Nvidia is the world’s top chipmaker for a very good reason – its GPUs are widely viewed as the most effective for running AI workloads. But TensorWave’s chief executive Darrick Horton begs to differ. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, he said he purposely avoids buying Nvidia’s hardware or any of its other products. That’s because he thinks that the company has too much influence over the AI infrastructure market, and believes that’s a bad thing for the health of the industry.
