SiFive announced a $400 million financing round on Thursday led by Atreides Management and Nvidia, bringing the companys valuation to $3.65 billion. The Silicon Valley design firm said the capital will be applied to development of a central processor unit aimed at data centers, a market that is drawing increasing attention from multiple established chip players.
The company does not manufacture physical chips. Instead, it licenses the intellectual property and designs - effectively blueprints - that customers can adapt for their own internal silicon projects. Those customers include major cloud operators such as Alphabets Google, according to the company.
SiFives technology is built around RISC-V, an open chip instruction-set standard governed by a nonprofit foundation rather than controlled by a single commercial vendor. Chief Executive Officer Patrick Little framed RISC-Vs openness and the maturity of its ecosystem as advantages in conversations with potential customers. "Theres uncertainty about where their tried-and-true suppliers are going to be able to take them over the coming years," he said, referring to the doubts some customers may now have about their incumbent suppliers. "And so all of them have become comfortable, because weve worked with them for a decade, that RISC-V has now matured to the point where it can be that option for them."
Little also said the company expects this round to be its last before preparing for a public offering, though he did not provide a timetable for when an initial public offering might occur.
The fundraising comes as the data-center CPU market becomes more contested. The sector has recently seen new offerings and intensified interest from well-known chipmakers. Little pointed to moves by other vendors that have shifted the competitive landscape and created openings for SiFive to court customers evaluating alternatives to their current suppliers.
SiFive named several investors in the round beyond Atreides and Nvidia. Other participants included Apollo, D1 Capital Partners, Point72, and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Investment Management. Existing backers that took part included Prosperity 7 Ventures, Capital Group and Sutter Hill Ventures.
Asked about the companys strategic target, Little said SiFive had chosen to pursue "the highest brass ring in the data center" by designing a CPU specifically for that market. The company intends to use the new funding to advance that design work.
SiFive positioned its approach as an alternative to architectures and suppliers that some customers may now view as evolving in ways that complicate long-term planning. By offering an open-standard foundation and a decade of customer relationships, the company is promoting RISC-V as a mature option for organizations considering in-house or customized processor designs.
Funding details: $400 million raised; valuation $3.65 billion.
Primary objective: Develop a central processor design for data centers using RISC-V-based intellectual property.