Naveen Rao, the former head of artificial intelligence at Databricks, is in talks to raise one billion dollars at a five billion dollar valuation for his new startup, Unconventional, Inc. The company is building a new type of computer, according to four people familiar with the discussions.
Andreessen Horowitz has agreed to lead the investment. Lightspeed and Lux Capital are also participating in the deal, according to two sources, though none of the venture capital firms responded to requests for comment. Databricks is also said to be investing in Rao’s new company, as Bloomberg reported last month.
Rao has already raised hundreds of millions of dollars and plans to begin building the startup without waiting for the full one billion dollar round to close. He plans to raise the rest of the capital in installments, a funding approach commonly referred to as a tranched round.
Rao declined to comment, but he did publicly acknowledge the new startup last week, confirming its name. He described its hoped-for product as rethinking the foundations of a computer to build a new substrate for intelligence that is as efficient as biology, aiming for brain scale efficiency without the biological baggage.
Databricks acquired Rao’s previous startup, MosaicML, in 2023 for 1.3 billion dollars. Founded by Rao in 2020 with a focus on training and deploying large AI models, MosaicML raised 33.7 million dollars from investors including Lux Capital, DCVC, Playground Global, and Samsung Next.
Prior to MosaicML, Rao co-founded the machine learning platform Nervana Systems, which Intel Corp. acquired in 2016 for a reported sum of more than 400 million dollars.
Rao, who spent over two years as VP of AI at Databricks, left the company last month to focus on his new startup. Our sources say Rao’s vision will essentially compete with Nvidia by designing a novel AI machine that includes both custom silicon chips and server infrastructure.