A 2-year-old startup founded by Harvard dropouts has just raised $120 million in venture funding to try and build a competitive chip and take on Nvidia in artificial intelligence. Co-founder and CEO Gavin Uberti said that as AI develops, most of the technology's power-hungry computing requirements will be filled by customized, hard-wired chips called ASICs. "We're making the biggest bet in AI," Uberti said in an interview. Other chip startups taking on Nvidia include Cerebras Systems, which is building a physically larger AI chip, and Tenstorrent, which is using a trendy technology called RISC-V to build AI chips. Venture capitalists invested $6 billion in AI semiconductor companies in 2023, up slightly from $5.7 billion in 2022, according to data from PitchBook.

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Persons: Gavin Uberti, Uberti, we'll, Peter Thiel, Stanley Druckenmiller, Kyle Vogt, we've, Robert Wachen Organizations: Nvidia, Harvard, Apple, Venture Partners, Cerebras Systems, Semiconductors, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co, Venture Locations: Cupertino , California, PitchBook