Ex-Intel executives raise $21.5 million for RISC-V chip startup

By Max A. Cherney

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Newly formed chip startup AheadComputing on Wednesday said it had raised $21.5 million in seed funding.

Co-founded by several former Intel central processing unit (CPU) engineers and executives, the company plans to build technology and chips based on the open source architecture called RISC-V, pronounced "risk five."

AheadComputing plans to use the funds to design and develop CPU technology that aims to solve some of the computing performance issues that have arisen around artificial intelligence, such as bandwidth shortages and data processing limitations.

Co-founder and CEO Debbie Marr said it was an opportune moment for a startup that relies on RISC-V technology because it avoids the pitfalls of the x86 architecture used by Intel and Advanced Micro Devices and the problems associated with relying on a single supplier - Arm Holdings - for the underlying designs.

"The RISC-V ecosystem is open, it's not owned, it's not controlled by one company," Marr said in an interview with Reuters. "There are hundreds of players. There is plenty of room for innovation."

Marr and other senior executives left last year and founded AheadComputing, which is headquartered in Portland. Marr and other AheadComputing executives were responsible for developing several key technologies at Intel that significantly improved CPU performance.

The seed funding round was led by Eclipse Ventures and included Maverick Capital, Fundomo and EPIQ Capital Group. Former Apple and Tesla chip architect Jim Keller invested in the round as well. Keller runs his own RISC-V venture called Tenstorrent.

Founding the company was attractive because of the growing demand for high-performance computing, Eclipse partner Greg Reichow said in an interview. By 2030, it will be roughly $100 billion, he said.

"There's a big market tailwind in this," Reichow said.

(Max A. Cherney in San Francisco; Editing by Kim Coghill)