Naveen Rao, the former head of AI at Databricks, has raised 475 million dollars in seed capital at a 4.5 billion dollar valuation for his new startup, Unconventional AI. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed Ventures, with participation from Lux Capital and DCVC. This funding is a first installment toward the goal of up to 1 billion dollars for the round, Rao stated.
TechCrunch first reported back in October that Unconventional AI was seeking this mega funding. The final valuation is marginally lower than the 5 billion dollars sources indicated Rao was originally seeking. If he does eventually raise the full 1 billion dollars, it will be interesting to see how that impacts his company’s final valuation.
Unconventional AI is focused on building a new, energy-efficient computer for artificial intelligence. Rao has previously stated that his goal is to create a computer that is as efficient as biology.
Databricks acquired Rao’s previous startup, MosaicML, in 2023 for 1.3 billion dollars. Prior to founding 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.