MatX, a chip startup founded by two former Google hardware engineers, has raised a $500 million Series B funding round. The investment was 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 ten times better at training large language models and delivering results compared to Nvidia’s GPUs.
Other investors in this round include Marvell Technology, NFDG, Spark Capital, and Stripe co-founders Patrick and John Collison. The startup’s founder and CEO, Reiner Pope, announced the funding on Tuesday.
Although the company did not release its latest valuation, its closest competitor, Etched, raised a $500 million round at a $5 billion valuation last month. Etched did not 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. That 2024 round valued the startup at more than $300 million.
Before co-founding MatX in 2023, Reiner Pope led AI software development for Google’s TPUs, the company’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 in 2027.