AMD Is Pouring Cash Into A.I. Startups: Companies It Has Backed So Far
AMD, a Santa Clara, Calif.-based chipmaker that has benefited generously from the A.I. boom, is pouring some of its newfound cash into generative A.I. startups. AMD’s newest A.I. bet is on Liquid AI, a startup established last year by MIT researchers that aims to create cost-effective A.I. models. The chipmaker’s investment arm led the startup’s recent $250 million funding round, which included investors like OSS Capital and Duke Capital Partners and reportedly values the startup at more than $2 billion.
Unlike the traditional neural networks underpinning A.I. systems, which model the human brain, Liquid AI is focused on a new type of A.I. model that takes inspiration from the smaller brains of worms and requires significantly less compute and energy. “Liquid AI’s unique approach to developing efficient AI models will push the boundaries of A.I., making it far more accessible,” said Mathew Hein, chief strategy officer of corporate development at AMD, in a statement.
The Liquid AI investment marks the ninth A.I. bet placed by AMD Ventures in 2024 alone, according to data from Crunchbase. And it isn’t just the chipmaker’s venture division that has been ramping up its work with startups. Of the 12 investments by AMD since 2000, half were made in the past four years.
“We’ve decided to become much more active in how we’re working on this,” said Lisa Su, CEO of AMD, during a recent podcast interview. In light of A.I.’s rapid advancement, even large enterprises that were previously “more conservative with working with startups are also becoming much more open,” added Su. “Nobody wants to be behind in A.I.”
AMD’s top A.I. investments
Earlier this month, AMD Ventures participated in a $155 million funding round for Ayar Labs, a startup developing A.I. chips that transmit data to each other with light. Other investments made in 2024 benefited the likes of Cohere, a Canadian startup specializing in A.I. models for enterprises, and the data-labeling Scale AI. In September, AMD became one of the backers behind World Labs, a venture established by acclaimed A.I. academic Fei-Fei Li that aims to create A.I. models able to navigate and reason with the 3D world.
AMD company-wide investments, meanwhile, have focused on A.I.-centered companies like the GPU cloud platform TensorWave and the model provider Fireworks AI. Last year, the chipmaker backed Hugging Face, an open-source A.I. developer platform, in a $235 million round that valued the company at $4.5 billion.
AMD isn’t the only chipmaker moonlighting as a major A.I. investor. Nvidia (NVDA), too, has demonstrated a growing appetite for venture capital in recent years; having also partaken in fundraising rounds for Hugging Face, Cohere and Scale AI. The value of its A.I. bets reportedly totaled $1.5 billion at the beginning of 2024—a sharp jump from just $300 million the year prior.