Nvidia backs RISC‑V push
Nvidia has invested in SiFive as the startup raised $400 million at a $3.65 billion valuation, a bet that signals interest in open RISC‑V CPU designs for AI datacentres. The move is being framed as part of a broader effort to diversify infrastructure beneath the GPU layer and influence next‑generation datacentre architectures. (Parameter 1) (Parameter 2)
Nvidia has backed SiFive in a $400 million funding round, tying itself more closely to the open RISC-V chip architecture for artificial intelligence data centers. (sifive.com) SiFive said on April 9 that the Series G round was oversubscribed and valued the company at $3.65 billion. Atreides Management led the financing, with Apollo Global Management, Nvidia, Point72 Turion, T. Rowe Price Investment Management, Prosperity7 Ventures, and Sutter Hill Ventures also participating. (sifive.com) SiFive does not manufacture chips itself. It sells processor designs and related intellectual property built on RISC-V, an open instruction set architecture — the basic rulebook that tells a processor which commands it can understand. (riscv.org) (sifive.com) That matters in data centers because graphics processing units do not run alone. Artificial intelligence systems still need central processing units to manage memory, move data, and coordinate work across accelerators, and Nvidia has already built its own Arm-based Grace central processing unit for that layer. (nvidia.com) RISC-V offers a different route from Arm Holdings and x86, the two instruction sets that dominate server processors today. Because the standard is open, chip companies can customize designs without depending on a single proprietary architecture owner. (riscv.org) (reuters.com) Nvidia and SiFive had already moved closer in January. SiFive said then that it would integrate Nvidia NVLink Fusion, Nvidia’s high-bandwidth chip-to-chip interconnect, into its high-performance RISC-V data-center products. (sifive.com) SiFive said the new money will fund high-performance scalar, vector, and matrix processor designs, expand software work, and help customers deploy data-center products. The company also said its software plans build on existing ports of CUDA, Red Hat, and Ubuntu to the SiFive platform. (sifive.com) Reuters reported that SiFive is targeting data-center chip technology and that the round comes ahead of a planned initial public offering. TechCrunch reported the company was founded in 2015 and has long been one of the main commercial backers of RISC-V. (reuters.com) (techcrunch.com) For Nvidia, the check is small next to its graphics processing unit business, but the signal is larger: the company is putting money into the processor rulebook beneath the accelerator layer, not just the accelerators on top. (sifive.com) (reuters.com)
