Nvidia challenger AI chip startup MatX raised $500M | TechCrunch
Summary
MatX, an AI chip startup founded by ex-Google engineers, has raised $500M in Series B funding to develop processors aimed at outperforming Nvidia's GPUs for LLM training.
Why It Matters
The significant funding round highlights the growing competition in the AI chip market, particularly against Nvidia's dominance. As AI applications expand, innovations in chip technology are crucial for improving performance and efficiency in machine learning tasks.
Key Takeaways
- MatX raised $500M to enhance AI chip performance.
- The startup aims to produce chips that are 10x better for LLM training than Nvidia's offerings.
- Founded by former Google TPU engineers, MatX is positioned to challenge established players in the AI hardware market.
In Brief Posted: 4:45 PM PST · February 24, 2026 Image Credits:sankai / Getty Images Marina Temkin Nvidia challenger AI chip startup MatX raised $500M MatX, a chip startup founded by two former Google hardware engineers, has raised a $500 million Series B led by Jane Street and Situational Awareness, an investment fund formed by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner. The company’s goal is to make its processors 10 times better at training LLMs and delivering results than Nvidia’s GPUs. Other investors in the round include Marvell Technology, NFDG, Spark Capital, and Stripe co-founders Patrick Collison and John Collison, the startup’s founder and CEO Reiner Pope announced Tuesday in a post on LinkedIn. Although the company didn’t release its latest valuation, Etched, MatX’s closest competitor, raised a $500 million round at a $5 billion valuation, Bloomberg reported last month. Etched didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. MatX’s latest round comes more than a year after its Series A of about $100 million, which was led by Spark Capital. TechCrunch earlier reported that the 2024 round valued the startup at more than $300 million. Before co-founding MatX in 2023, Pope led AI software development for Google’s TPUs, the tech giant’s proprietary AI chips. His co-founder, Mike Gunter, was a lead designer of the TPU hardware before leaving to launch the startup. The new funding will help MatX produce its chips with TSMC, with plans to start shipping them ...
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