What are the latest funding news in the AI chip market? (June 2026)
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AI chip funding stayed very active in early 2026, with large rounds going to companies building data-center accelerators for training and inference.
The latest disclosed deals show strong investor interest in inference systems, photonic chips, wafer-scale processors, transformer ASICs, and China-focused AI GPUs.
From December 2025 to April 2026, the market included both private fundraising rounds and IPOs, which shows that AI chip companies are moving across the full capital stack.
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Insights
- The 12 latest AI chip market fundraising events represented about $4.96B in disclosed capital, showing that data-center AI accelerators remain one of the largest semiconductor funding themes.
- Inference was the clearest keyword across the list, with Rebellions, SambaNova, OLIX, Positron AI, Neurophos, and Mythic all positioning around production AI workloads.
- China-linked companies represented three of the 12 latest deals, including two IPOs, which shows how domestic AI GPU capacity has become a public-market priority.
- Photonic AI chips appeared twice in the latest list, with OLIX and Neurophos together raising $330M for optical inference architectures aimed at data-center power limits.
- The largest private round was Cerebras at $1.0B, which shows that investors still back very capital-intensive alternatives to Nvidia when deployment scale is visible.
- Several companies were still pre-commercial, including MatX, OLIX, Neurophos, and Etched, which means capital is still flowing before revenue-scale proof in AI accelerators.
- IPO activity from Biren and MetaX suggests the AI chip market is no longer only a venture-backed startup race, especially in China’s domestic compute ecosystem.
- The funding pattern was not only about training chips, as many of the newest companies focused on inference, rack systems, or specialized transformer acceleration.
As this chart shows, and as featured in our AI chip market deck, search interest in AI chips has grown significantly
Summary table of the latest funding deals in the AI chip market as of June 2026
We define the AI chip market as data-center accelerators whose primary purpose is to run AI workloads, including training and inference.
We include GPUs, TPUs, and other AI accelerators or ASICs sold for deployment in servers used to train or serve machine-learning models.
We exclude general-purpose CPUs, networking and memory components, and endpoint or edge chips in phones, PCs, cars, and IoT devices.
You can also read our detailed analysis to understand how funding activity in the AI chip market has evolved over the last few years.
We also have a quarter-by-quarter analysis of funding activity in the market here.
Finally, you can check our complete list of fundraising deals for the AI chip market (we update this list every quarter) as well as our ranking of the most funded startups.
| Name | When | Amount in $ | Round Type | Category |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| EVAS Intelligence / Yixing Intelligence | 22 April 2026 | $211M | Series B | RISC-V data-center AI training & inference accelerators |
| Rebellions | 30 March 2026 | $400M | Pre-IPO round | Data-center AI inference systems |
| SambaNova Systems | 24 February 2026 | $350M+ | Series E | Full-stack data-center inference accelerators & systems |
| MatX | 24 February 2026 | $500M | Series B | LLM training & inference accelerators |
| OLIX | 13 February 2026 | $220M | Series A | Photonic AI inference accelerators |
| Positron AI | 4 February 2026 | $230M | Series B | Memory-rich data-center AI inference hardware |
| Cerebras Systems | 3 to 4 February 2026 | $1,000M | Series H | Wafer-scale AI training & inference systems |
| Neurophos | 22 January 2026 | $110M | Series A | Photonic AI inference chips |
| Etched | 14 January 2026 | About $500M | Late-stage private round | Transformer-specialized AI ASICs |
| Biren Technology | 31 December 2025 to 2 January 2026 | $716.85M | IPO | Data-center AI GPUs & GPGPUs |
| Mythic | 17 December 2025 | $125M | Undisclosed private round | Analog AI inference accelerators |
| MetaX Integrated Circuits | 16 to 17 December 2025 | About $596M | IPO | Data-center AI GPUs |
All the latest funding deals during in the AI chip market as of June 2026
EVAS Intelligence raised $211M in April 2026.
When was it?
The Series B was announced on 22 April 2026.
Who are they?
EVAS Intelligence, also known as Yixing Intelligence, builds RISC-V AI chips, PCIe cards, servers, and clusters for large-model workloads.
Geographical focus?
EVAS Intelligence is China-first, with global expansion mentioned as part of its commercialization plan.
Why do we include them in the AI chip market?
EVAS Intelligence belongs in the AI chip market because its Epoch accelerators are built for data-center training and deep-learning deployments.
What is the company stage?
EVAS Intelligence is in growth and commercialization, with mass production already mentioned for its Epoch series.
How much did they raise?
EVAS Intelligence raised about $211M in this round, based on the reported RMB 1.5B amount.
What round is it?
The round was a Series B financing.
Why did they raise?
EVAS Intelligence raised to mass-produce Epoch chips, commercialize the platform, build the next flagship chip, and expand its ecosystem.
Rebellions raised $400M in March 2026.
When was it?
The pre-IPO round was announced on 30 March 2026.
Who are they?
Rebellions builds AI inference chips and rack-level systems for production-scale data-center AI workloads.
Geographical focus?
Rebellions is based in South Korea and is expanding toward the U.S. and global AI infrastructure markets.
Why do we include them in the AI chip market?
Rebellions belongs in the AI chip market because Rebel100, RebelRack, and RebelPOD are data-center inference accelerators and deployable systems.
What is the company stage?
Rebellions is in growth and pre-IPO stage, with deployable systems and a global expansion plan.
How much did they raise?
Rebellions raised $400M in this round.
What round is it?
The round was a pre-IPO financing.
Why did they raise?
Rebellions raised to scale U.S. expansion, increase Rebel100 production, launch RebelRack and RebelPOD globally, and prepare for an IPO.
This chart, featured in our AI chip market deck, compares the main business model options for AI accelerator chip companies
SambaNova Systems raised more than $350M in February 2026.
When was it?
The Series E was announced on 24 February 2026.
Who are they?
SambaNova Systems builds full-stack AI systems around its RDU and SN50 accelerator for enterprise and cloud-scale inference.
Geographical focus?
SambaNova Systems is U.S.-based and serves global enterprise, sovereign, telecom, and data-center customers.
Why do we include them in the AI chip market?
SambaNova Systems belongs in the AI chip market because SN50 is an AI accelerator for cloud-scale inference and agentic AI workloads.
What is the company stage?
SambaNova Systems is in growth stage, with customer traction and SN50 planned to ship later in 2026.
How much did they raise?
SambaNova Systems raised more than $350M in this round.
What round is it?
The round was a Series E financing.
Why did they raise?
SambaNova Systems raised to expand manufacturing, grow cloud capacity, and support its collaboration with Intel on heterogeneous AI data centers.
MatX raised $500M in February 2026.
When was it?
The Series B was announced on 24 February 2026.
Who are they?
MatX designs high-throughput AI chips for LLM training, prefill, decode, reinforcement learning, and long-context workloads.
Geographical focus?
MatX is U.S.-based and targets frontier labs and global buyers of AI infrastructure.
Why do we include them in the AI chip market?
MatX belongs in the AI chip market because its chips target server-side LLM training and inference workloads.
What is the company stage?
MatX is pre-commercial and in late product development, with first chips planned to ship in 2027.
How much did they raise?
MatX raised $500M in this round.
What round is it?
The round was a Series B financing.
Why did they raise?
MatX raised to produce chips with TSMC and move toward commercial shipments in 2027.
This chart, featured in our AI chip market deck, shows how Nvidia is leading in AI chips
OLIX raised $220M in February 2026.
When was it?
The Series A was reported on 13 February 2026.
Who are they?
OLIX is building an Optical Tensor Processing Unit that uses photonics and SRAM for faster AI inference.
Geographical focus?
OLIX is U.K.-based and is recruiting across London, Bristol, Austin, San Francisco, and Toronto.
Why do we include them in the AI chip market?
OLIX belongs in the AI chip market because its OTPU is a server-side AI inference accelerator for data-center workloads.
What is the company stage?
OLIX is pre-commercial and scaling, with first products expected in 2027.
How much did they raise?
OLIX raised $220M in this round.
What round is it?
The round was a Series A financing.
Why did they raise?
OLIX raised to accelerate development of the OTPU and scale the team toward product shipments.
Positron AI raised $230M in February 2026.
When was it?
The Series B was announced on 4 February 2026.
Who are they?
Positron AI makes energy-efficient inference hardware and systems, including Atlas and its Asimov silicon roadmap.
Geographical focus?
Positron AI is U.S.-based and targets global data-center customers, with strategic relevance to Qatar.
Why do we include them in the AI chip market?
Positron AI belongs in the AI chip market because Atlas and Asimov are server-side systems and chips for AI inference.
What is the company stage?
Positron AI is in early growth and product-market fit, with Atlas shipping and Asimov in development.
How much did they raise?
Positron AI raised $230M in this round.
What round is it?
The round was a Series B financing.
Why did they raise?
Positron AI raised to scale Atlas deployments and accelerate the Asimov roadmap for lower-cost, lower-power inference.
In our AI chip market deck, we identify pain points entrepreneurs should prioritize
Cerebras Systems raised $1.0B in February 2026.
When was it?
The round closed on 3 February 2026 and was posted on 4 February 2026.
Who are they?
Cerebras Systems builds wafer-scale AI processors and full AI infrastructure for training and inference.
Geographical focus?
Cerebras Systems is U.S.-based and serves enterprises, governments, research institutes, and cloud customers globally.
Why do we include them in the AI chip market?
Cerebras Systems belongs in the AI chip market because WSE-3 and Cerebras systems accelerate AI training and inference in data centers.
What is the company stage?
Cerebras Systems is in late growth and IPO-ready stage, with large customers and global deployments.
How much did they raise?
Cerebras Systems raised $1.0B in this round.
What round is it?
The round was a Series H financing.
Why did they raise?
Cerebras Systems raised to scale AI infrastructure as demand grows for faster training and inference systems.
Neurophos raised $110M in January 2026.
When was it?
The Series A was announced on 22 January 2026.
Who are they?
Neurophos is building photonic Optical Processing Units with more than one million optical processing elements on a chip.
Geographical focus?
Neurophos is U.S.-based and targets AI data centers globally.
Why do we include them in the AI chip market?
Neurophos belongs in the AI chip market because its OPU is presented as a drop-in GPU replacement for data-center inference.
What is the company stage?
Neurophos is in early product stage and is preparing to launch exaflop-scale photonic AI chips.
How much did they raise?
Neurophos raised $110M in this round.
What round is it?
The round was a Series A financing.
Why did they raise?
Neurophos raised to commercialize a photonic architecture designed to address data-center power and scalability limits.
This market map, featured in our AI chip market deck, highlights top companies and startups in the AI chip market
Etched raised about $500M in January 2026.
When was it?
The late-stage private round was reported on 14 January 2026.
Who are they?
Etched builds Sohu, an ASIC purpose-built to run transformer models more efficiently than general-purpose GPUs.
Geographical focus?
Etched is U.S.-based and targets AI infrastructure customers globally.
Why do we include them in the AI chip market?
Etched belongs in the AI chip market because Sohu is a server-side transformer ASIC for LLM inference and related workloads.
What is the company stage?
Etched is pre-commercial and in late product development, with its first major chip still being prepared.
How much did they raise?
Etched raised about $500M in this round.
What round is it?
The round was a late-stage private financing with no disclosed series label.
Why did they raise?
Etched raised to fund Sohu development and scale its transformer-specific silicon strategy.
Biren Technology raised $716.85M through its IPO.
When was it?
The IPO was priced and reported on 31 December 2025, and trading began on 2 January 2026.
Who are they?
Biren Technology builds GPGPU chips and GPU-based intelligent computing solutions for AI training and inference.
Geographical focus?
Biren Technology is China-focused and serves domestic AI compute infrastructure needs.
Why do we include them in the AI chip market?
Biren Technology belongs in the AI chip market because its GPGPU products support AI model training and inference in data centers.
What is the company stage?
Biren Technology is public and in growth stage, with revenue generation and a Hong Kong listing.
How much did they raise?
Biren Technology raised $716.85M through the IPO.
What round is it?
The financing event was an IPO.
Why did they raise?
Biren Technology raised to fund AI GPU development and expansion as China accelerates domestic GPU supply.
This chart, featured in our AI chip market deck, shows annual funding in AI chip startups
Mythic raised $125M in December 2025.
When was it?
The private round was announced on 17 December 2025.
Who are they?
Mythic makes analog AI processing units and chiplets designed to run AI models with much lower energy use than GPUs.
Geographical focus?
Mythic is U.S.-based and targets data centers, defense, robotics, and automotive customers.
Why do we include them in the AI chip market?
Mythic belongs in the AI chip market because its APUs target large-parameter AI inference in data-center environments.
What is the company stage?
Mythic is in turnaround and early growth stage after rebuilding its architecture, roadmap, software, and strategy.
How much did they raise?
Mythic raised $125M in this round.
What round is it?
The round was an undisclosed private financing.
Why did they raise?
Mythic raised to pursue an analog AI architecture designed to reduce the power cost of data-center AI workloads.
MetaX Integrated Circuits raised about $596M through its IPO.
When was it?
The Shanghai STAR Market debut happened on 17 December 2025, after the listing plan on 16 December 2025.
Who are they?
MetaX Integrated Circuits develops high-performance GPU chips and computing platforms for AI, general-purpose computing, and cloud rendering.
Geographical focus?
MetaX Integrated Circuits is China-focused and serves the domestic GPU and AI computing ecosystem.
Why do we include them in the AI chip market?
MetaX Integrated Circuits belongs in the AI chip market because its GPUs are used for AI training and inference.
What is the company stage?
MetaX Integrated Circuits is public and in growth stage, while still loss-making as it scales domestic AI GPU adoption.
How much did they raise?
MetaX Integrated Circuits raised about $596M through the IPO.
What round is it?
The financing event was an IPO.
Why did they raise?
MetaX Integrated Circuits raised to fund next-generation GPU development and benefit from China’s push for domestic AI chip substitution.
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- All funding deals in the AI chip market
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