Generative artificial intellience (AI) compute startup d-Matrix has successfully closed a $110 million Series-B funding round led by Singapore-based global investment firm Temasek.
Announced on Wednesday, d-Matrix intends to use the funding to commercialise its Corsair chiplet, which is aimed at reducing memory bottlenecks and computing costs associated with large-language models (LLMs) and artificial intelligence computational performance.
A chiplet is a smaller, modular block of semiconductors that contains a portion of the functionality of a larger chip. Chiplets are designed to be integrated with other chiplets or components to create a complete system or chip.
“The current trajectory of AI compute is unsustainable as the TCO (total cost of ownership) to run AI inference is escalating rapidly,” said Sid Sheth, co-founder and chief executive at d-Matrix. “The team at d-Matrix is changing the cost economics of deploying AI inference with a compute solution purpose-built for LLMs, and this round of funding validates our position in the industry.”
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)'s venture fund M12 joined the Series-B round alongside Samsung Ventures, Playground Global, Palo Alto Networks, Industry Ventures and others, according to Crunchbase.
“We’re entering the production phase when LLM inference TCO becomes a critical factor in how much, where, and when enterprises use advanced AI in their services and applications,” said Michael Stewart from M12.
“d-Matrix has been following a plan that will enable industry-leading TCO for a variety of potential model service scenarios using a flexible, resilient chiplet architecture based on a memory-centric approach.”