Rivos was at the center of attention in 2022 when it became embroiled in a trade secrets lawsuit filed by Apple. The tech giant accused the company of poaching dozens of its engineers and using confidential information to develop chips that could rival Apple’s own iPhone chips.
“We’re excited to be targeting customers who are building data-driven solutions,” said CEO Puneet Kumar in a statement to TechCrunch.
Rivos, however, denied these allegations and launched a countersuit against Apple for unfair competition. Eventually, in February, Apple settled the lawsuit, and around the same time, it also resolved separate litigation with some of the Apple engineers who had been hired by Rivos.
With the courtroom drama now over, Rivos is focusing on its core mission of bringing cutting-edge chipset technology to the market.
Kumar shared, “Rivos was founded with the goal of creating leading power-efficient and high-performance chips. We are now targeting customers who are developing data-driven solutions.”
To finance its efforts, Rivos recently announced that it raised over $250 million in an oversubscribed, extended Series A round. The funding was led by Matrix Capital Management, with participation from major chip companies like Intel and MediaTek.
Other notable investors include Cambium Capital, Hotung Venture Group, Walden Catalyst, Dell Technologies Capital, and Koch Disruptive Technologies.
This news marks a significant turnaround for Rivos, which faced challenges in fundraising and recruitment due to the pending Apple lawsuit. Last year, the company had to lay off around 6% of its employees and delay a planned $400 billion Series A round.
Rivos’ ultimate goal is to create chips primarily for servers that can handle data-heavy tasks, including AI and big data analytics. According to Kumar, Rivos is targeting customers in the data-driven market, particularly those using generative AI and analytics for decision-making.
Kumar explained, “Rivos supports the intense hardware requirements of AI models and analytics that will revolutionize the enterprise.”
Rivos’ first chipset is built on RISC-V, an open standard instruction set architecture (ISA). This is a significant development, as it challenges the dominance of existing ISAs, such as Arm and Intel, by offering an open, royalty-free alternative.
At the core of Rivos’ chip is a “data parallel accelerator” designed to boost AI and big data computations. Essentially, it serves as a GPU for non-graphical processing tasks. The chip was manufactured using TSMC’s advanced 3nm process, which is considered to be cutting-edge. Apple is currently the only company using this process in its M3 chipset series, while other major players like Qualcomm, MediaTek, Nvidia, and AMD are expected to use it for their upcoming chips.
Rivos is also working on self-contained data center hardware based on the Open Compute Project modular standard. Additionally, it is creating a “firmware-to-app” software stack for programming the chip.
Kumar added, “Our unique approach allows customer workloads to be easily deployed on our hardware, utilizing their existing models and databases for an immediate benefit.”
Currently, Rivos has no revenue, but its business model revolves around charging customers, primarily large data center operators, for its hardware and complementary software solutions. Early investor David Goel believes that Rivos’ “low-friction” adoption pipeline sets it apart in the competitive chip market.
Goel stated, “The Rivos team has adeptly integrated the groundbreaking RISC-V architecture with a creative accelerator, bringing their vision to life. Their prototype chip is a compelling demonstration of their unique capabilities.”
However, Rivos is entering a highly competitive space, with major tech companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta developing their own in-house chips for AI and big data analytics. Additionally, numerous startups are also vying for a share of the custom data center chip market, which is projected to reach $10 billion this year and double by 2025.
Rivals like Rebellions, Groq, and Habana Labs have all faced challenges in the industry. Rivos plans to differentiate itself by expanding its manufacturing capabilities and investing in platform and software engineering.
Kumar said, “With 375 employees and hundreds of millions in funding, we are well-positioned to achieve our goals.” He also emphasized Rivos’ “recompile-not-redesign” approach, which aims to make it easier for customers to deploy their workloads on Rivos’ hardware.
Kumar explained, “The fast-paced evolution of generative AI and its merger with data analytics make it crucial for accelerators to be easy to program and debug, with seamless data transfer between CPU and accelerator.”
