SiFive, the RISC-V chip design company founded in 2015 by UC Berkeley engineers, has closed a $400 million oversubscribed funding round that pushes its valuation to $3.65 billion. The investment, led by Atreides Management—a firm founded by former Fidelity investor Gavin Baker—marks a significant milestone for the open-source hardware movement. Atreides Management previously participated in Cerebras Systems’ $1 billion round, underscoring its focus on high-stakes semiconductor ventures.
Nvidia’s involvement as an investor in this round is particularly noteworthy. The GPU giant, which dominates the AI computing landscape with its proprietary CUDA ecosystem, is now backing a startup whose technology is built on RISC-V—an open instruction set architecture that stands apart from the x86 and ARM architectures that currently power most CPUs interfacing with Nvidia’s systems. This move signals a strategic pivot toward open, neutral chip designs as Nvidia seeks to fortify its “AI factory” infrastructure against mounting competition from Intel and AMD.
Other participants in the round include Apollo Global Management, D1 Capital Partners, Point72 Turion, T. Rowe Price Sutter Hill Ventures, and a mix of venture capital, private equity, and hedge funds. The broad investor base reflects growing confidence in RISC-V’s potential to disrupt traditional CPU markets, especially in data center and AI applications.
SiFive’s business model mirrors Arm’s historical approach: it licenses its chip designs to customers who then customize them for specific use cases, rather than manufacturing and selling finished chips. This stands in contrast to Arm’s recent shift; in March, Arm launched its first-ever manufactured chip, an AI processor developed in collaboration with Meta, with customers including OpenAI, Cerebras, and Cloudflare. SiFive, by contrast, remains committed to an open, proprietary-free design philosophy, positioning itself as a neutral player in an increasingly consolidated industry.
Prior to this round, SiFive had not raised capital since March 2022, according to Pitchbook estimates. That earlier round, led by Coatue Management, brought in $175 million at a pre-money valuation of $2.33 billion and included investors such as Intel Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, and Aramco Ventures. The new funding represents a substantial leap in both capital and valuation, driven by accelerating demand for RISC-V in high-performance computing.
Historically, RISC-V has been associated with embedded systems and niche applications, but SiFive is now targeting the data center CPU market for AI workloads. The company’s designs are engineered to integrate with Nvidia’s CUDA software and NVLink Fusion, a rack server system that enables heterogeneous CPU architectures to plug into Nvidia’s AI infrastructure. This compatibility is crucial as Nvidia looks to diversify its CPU partnerships beyond x86 and ARM-based suppliers.
The investment underscores a broader industry trend: as Intel and AMD aggressively develop alternatives to Nvidia’s GPU dominance, Nvidia is countering by supporting an 11-year-old startup that offers an open, alternative CPU technology. By aligning with SiFive, Nvidia not only gains access to RISC-V’s flexible design ecosystem but also reinforces its strategy of controlling key layers of the AI stack, from silicon to software.
With $400 million in fresh capital and Nvidia’s backing, SiFive is poised to accelerate its push into AI data centers, challenging the entrenched duopoly of Intel and ARM. The round validates RISC-V’s transition from an embedded-systems curiosity to a viable architecture for high-stakes, large-scale computing—a shift that could reshape the semiconductor landscape in the coming years.
