Unconventional AI Secures Record $475M Seed Funding
▼ Summary
– Naveen Rao has raised $475 million in seed capital at a $4.5 billion valuation for his new startup, Unconventional AI.
– The funding round was led by Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed Ventures, with a goal of raising up to $1 billion.
– Unconventional AI aims to build a new, energy-efficient computer for AI, with a goal of being “as efficient as biology.”
– Rao’s previous startup, MosaicML, was acquired by Databricks in 2023 for $1.3 billion.
– Prior to MosaicML, Rao co-founded Nervana Systems, which was acquired by Intel in 2016 for over $400 million.
A new venture in artificial intelligence has secured a landmark $475 million in seed funding, achieving a staggering $4.5 billion valuation. The startup, Unconventional AI, is the brainchild of Naveen Rao, the former head of AI at Databricks. This initial capital infusion represents the first part of a larger funding round that aims to reach up to $1 billion, according to Rao’s statements to Bloomberg.
The investment was spearheaded by prominent venture capital firms Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed Ventures. They were joined by other notable investors, including Lux Capital and DCVC. Reports from last October indicated the company was pursuing this massive funding target, though the final valuation came in slightly below initial projections of around $5 billion. The ultimate impact on the company’s worth will become clearer if the full $1 billion goal is successfully raised.
Unconventional AI is not focused on developing another software model. Instead, its ambitious mission is to engineer a fundamentally new type of computer hardware specifically designed for artificial intelligence workloads. Rao has publicly articulated a vision to build systems that are radically more energy-efficient. On social media platform X, he stated the goal is to create computational efficiency that rivals biological systems.
This is not Rao’s first successful foray into the AI arena. His track record includes founding MosaicML, a company acquired by Databricks in 2023 for $1.3 billion. Before that, he co-founded Nervana Systems, a pioneering machine learning platform that was purchased by Intel in 2016 for a reported sum exceeding $400 million. This history of building and exiting valuable AI companies undoubtedly contributed to the significant investor confidence and record-breaking seed round for his latest undertaking.
(Source: TechCrunch)
