U.S. chip start-up plans to raise 600 million yuan to open up new track to compete with Nvidia and AMD

Compiled by Zhidongzhi | Edited by Huang Fei | Jiang Yu Zhidongxi reported on October 16 that according to Reuters, on October 15, U.S. chip design startup Bolt Graphics was seeking to raise approximately US$100 million (approximately RMB 672 million). The company is currently valued at approximately US$700 million (approximately RMB 4.704 billion). The company plans to develop GPUs that can compete with Nvidia and AMD, focusing on areas such as high-performance computing, professional rendering and game graphics. Currently, this round of financing is still in progress. Darwesh Singh, CEO of Bolt Graphics, refused to disclose the specific financing amount and terms, but said that the financing is progressing smoothly. Unlike Nvidia and AMD, which continue to increase their focus on AI chips, Bolt Graphics is trying to find market opportunities through differentiated product routes. The company has invested about six years in chip development and just completed the first round of testing of the Zeus GPU architecture this week. It plans to enter the professional market first and then expand to the consumer gaming graphics card market in the future. As the demand for AI computing power continues to grow and large technology companies continue to expand investment in chips and computing infrastructure, Bolt Graphics hopes to avoid direct competition with industry giants in the mainstream AI chip market through dedicated hardware for specific application scenarios. 1. Betting on dedicated GPUs, Zeus chips expand diverse scenarios Bolt Graphics is a chip start-up company headquartered in Silicon Valley, USA, founded by Darwish Singh in 2020. Reuters reported that in the past 10 years, venture capital institutions have been relatively cautious in investing in chip start-ups. The main reason is that the cost of research and development of advanced chips is high, and it often takes a long time from technology development to commercialization. Bolt Graphics has invested about 6 years in chip and hardware research and development. On October 13, semiconductor industry media HPCwire reported that Bolt Graphics has completed the first round of testing of the Zeus GPU architecture. The company said the test chip area is about