Edge Inference Chip Startup SiMa.ai Raising at $1.4 Billion Valuation

Nvidia might be on a tear, but some investors are still convinced that there’s demand for another kind of specialized chips. And they’re putting their money where their mouth is. 

For example: San Jose, Calif.-based SiMa.ai, which develops chips that work on devices such as drones or cameras, is in talks with investors to raise more than $100 million in new funding at a valuation of around $1.4 billion, according to two people with knowledge of the round. That would be a premium of more than 45% to its $960 million valuation from last August, according to PitchBook.

SiMa.ai is one of a number of startups that are hoping to take a piece of the AI chip market by building chips for specific purposes—in SiMa.ai’s case, chips that don’t need a lot of power and can run on devices such as drones, robots or cameras. The idea is that not all future AI applications will need the massive amount of computing power available in data centers, which if true could shake up expectations about how much infrastructure needs to be built out.