Home
SiFive Raises $400 Million in Funding with NVIDIA Backing, Reaches $3.65 Billion Valuation
Chip design company SiFive, founded by engineers from the University of California, Berkeley, recently closed an oversubscribed funding round of $400 million, bringing its valuation to $3.65 billion. The round was led by Atreides Management, with participation from NVIDIA and several other top-tier venture capital and institutional investors. This strong interest signals the capital market's confidence in the potential of the RISC-V architecture in the AI era.

SiFive's core technology is built on the open-source RISC-V instruction set, providing a distinct alternative to the dominant x86 and Arm architectures. Its business model follows Arm's early strategy of licensing chip designs for customer customization, rather than selling finished chip products. However, the competitive landscape is shifting, as Arm itself launched its own AI chip in March of this year in collaboration with clients like Meta.
Regarding funding, SiFive's last major round was in 2022, a $175 million investment led by Coatue Management that valued the company at $2.33 billion pre-money. This latest round not only marks a significant valuation increase but also provides substantial resources for expansion into high-performance computing. While RISC-V chips have traditionally been used in lightweight embedded systems, SiFive is now accelerating its push into the AI data center CPU market, backed by this new capital and ecosystem support.
On the technical collaboration front, SiFive plans to make its CPU designs compatible with NVIDIA's CUDA software ecosystem and NVLink Fusion architecture. This will allow them to integrate into NVIDIA's comprehensive "AI factory" system. The move indicates that while competitors like Intel and AMD challenge NVIDIA at the GPU level, NVIDIA is simultaneously strengthening its influence over the broader AI infrastructure by investing in open-architecture CPU companies.
SiFive's successful funding underscores the strategic importance of RISC-V within AI computing systems. It also reflects a broader industry trend away from closed, proprietary architectures and toward open ecosystems. As more capital and major industry players get involved, the transformation of the next-generation AI computing landscape—centered on CPU and GPU collaboration—is gaining significant momentum.
Related article
Superintelligence Arrives: Do We Let It In?
Loading the player…AI companies have been talking about superintelligent AI like it’s inevitable, but recent safety incidents like OpenAI’s Hugging Face breach are demonstrating the potential dangers of deploying AI systems that are more capable than
iFLYTEK Unveils Spark X2.5 General Large Model
On September 1, iFlytek will open-source two edge-focused large language models, Xinghuo X2.5-4B and Xinghuo X2.5-1.7B, according to the latest official announcement. Both models natively support a context window of up to 1 million tokens. They deliv
Meta Removes AI Photo Editing Feature Following User Backlash
Meta, the social media giant, is once again embroiled in a public debate regarding the delicate balance between artificial intelligence and user privacy. According to TechCrunch, Meta’s Superintelligence Labs introduced a new AI image generator, Muse
Related Special Topic Recommendations
Comments (1)
0/500
Holy moly, SiFive just bagged $400M with NVIDIA's name in the mix? That's a huge bet on RISC-V eating the world. Makes you wonder if ARM is sweating bullets right now. The whole custom chip dream is getting real, but $3.65B valuation feels like crypto vibes all over again — hope they actually ship products, not just press releases 🤷♂️
Chip design company SiFive, founded by engineers from the University of California, Berkeley, recently closed an oversubscribed funding round of $400 million, bringing its valuation to $3.65 billion. The round was led by Atreides Management, with participation from NVIDIA and several other top-tier venture capital and institutional investors. This strong interest signals the capital market's confidence in the potential of the RISC-V architecture in the AI era.

SiFive's core technology is built on the open-source RISC-V instruction set, providing a distinct alternative to the dominant x86 and Arm architectures. Its business model follows Arm's early strategy of licensing chip designs for customer customization, rather than selling finished chip products. However, the competitive landscape is shifting, as Arm itself launched its own AI chip in March of this year in collaboration with clients like Meta.
Regarding funding, SiFive's last major round was in 2022, a $175 million investment led by Coatue Management that valued the company at $2.33 billion pre-money. This latest round not only marks a significant valuation increase but also provides substantial resources for expansion into high-performance computing. While RISC-V chips have traditionally been used in lightweight embedded systems, SiFive is now accelerating its push into the AI data center CPU market, backed by this new capital and ecosystem support.
On the technical collaboration front, SiFive plans to make its CPU designs compatible with NVIDIA's CUDA software ecosystem and NVLink Fusion architecture. This will allow them to integrate into NVIDIA's comprehensive "AI factory" system. The move indicates that while competitors like Intel and AMD challenge NVIDIA at the GPU level, NVIDIA is simultaneously strengthening its influence over the broader AI infrastructure by investing in open-architecture CPU companies.
SiFive's successful funding underscores the strategic importance of RISC-V within AI computing systems. It also reflects a broader industry trend away from closed, proprietary architectures and toward open ecosystems. As more capital and major industry players get involved, the transformation of the next-generation AI computing landscape—centered on CPU and GPU collaboration—is gaining significant momentum.
Superintelligence Arrives: Do We Let It In?
Loading the player…AI companies have been talking about superintelligent AI like it’s inevitable, but recent safety incidents like OpenAI’s Hugging Face breach are demonstrating the potential dangers of deploying AI systems that are more capable than
iFLYTEK Unveils Spark X2.5 General Large Model
On September 1, iFlytek will open-source two edge-focused large language models, Xinghuo X2.5-4B and Xinghuo X2.5-1.7B, according to the latest official announcement. Both models natively support a context window of up to 1 million tokens. They deliv
Meta Removes AI Photo Editing Feature Following User Backlash
Meta, the social media giant, is once again embroiled in a public debate regarding the delicate balance between artificial intelligence and user privacy. According to TechCrunch, Meta’s Superintelligence Labs introduced a new AI image generator, Muse
Holy moly, SiFive just bagged $400M with NVIDIA's name in the mix? That's a huge bet on RISC-V eating the world. Makes you wonder if ARM is sweating bullets right now. The whole custom chip dream is getting real, but $3.65B valuation feels like crypto vibes all over again — hope they actually ship products, not just press releases 🤷♂️











