The financing was spearheaded by the venture capital firm Lightspeed Venture Partners, with backing from DST Global, NVentures (the venture capital division of Nvidia), Felicis Ventures, 49 Palms, Radical Ventures, and Sequoia Capital, the latter of which also spearheaded Ricursive’s initial seed investment.
Notably, this investment occurred just a couple of months following the company’s launch in Palo Alto, California. Previously, in December, Ricursive secured a $35 million seed round, achieving a valuation of $750 million.
Established by Anna Goldy (CEO) and Azalia Mirhosseini (CTO), formerly of Google DeepMind’s AI chip design team, Ricursive states it is developing a platform “to complete the recursive feedback loop connecting AI and the chips that support it.” The company suggests that as chip design has become a limiting factor in AI progress, their methodology enables AI to “continually enhance the silicon it relies upon, thereby establishing a perpetual cycle of advancement.”
Goldy and Mirhosseini were also instrumental in creating AlphaChip, reportedly utilized in four generations of Google TPUs and by external semiconductor firms.
“Ricursive is crafting a future where the accelerated co-evolution of AI and hardware becomes a tangible reality, unlocking substantial possibilities for boosted efficiency and decreased energy usage,” voiced Mirhosseini.
Lightspeed Venture Partners Partner Guru Chahal commented, “Anna and Azalea have pioneered a novel method for chip design through AlphaChip. At Ricursive, their aim is to construct a comprehensive platform that facilitates a consistent enhancement loop between AI models and the hardware that powers them.”
To provide context, on January 20th, Humans& Lab, founded by prominent researchers from Google, Anthropic, xAI, OpenAI, and Meta, declared raising $480 million in seed funding, achieving a notable valuation of $4.48 billion.
Source: crunchbase