The chip manufacturing startup Source Foundry is backed by Sequoia Capital
A MYSTERY US$400 million investment made by Situational Awareness just days after the hedge fund was on the brink of collapse was to chip manufacturing startup Source Foundry, according to people familiar with the matter.
Bloomberg had reported on a bet the hedge fund made on a privately held company backed by Sequoia Capital, without identifying the firm. The Wall Street Journal earlier named Source Foundry as the recipient.
Situational Awareness, founded by the former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner, had initially invested US$100 million in Source Foundry, bringing the total backing to US$500 million. Representatives for Situational Awareness and Source Foundry did not respond to requests for comment.
Aschenbrenner’s fund almost collapsed at the end of July when the Silicon Valley whiz kid struck a deal with Ken Griffin’s Citadel to sell off a chunk of its public stocks at a 10 per cent discount. It was thrown into tumult as a slew of its public technology investments rapidly lost value, sparking a wave of demands from banks for more and more collateral for his trades.
Sequoia Capital did not confirm the Situational Awareness investment in a reply to a request for comment, but spoke of how Source Foundry is trying to change chip manufacturing to benefit the AI industry.
“AI demand is growing on an exponential software curve, while semiconductor manufacturing capacity is growing on a linear industrial-equipment curve,” said Stephanie Zhan, a partner at Sequoia Capital.
“That widening mismatch is the chip wall. Source Foundry’s vision is to start from different physics and build something dramatically simpler, cheaper, and faster to manufacture. This enables chip manufacturing to truly scale at the velocity the industry needs, expanding the world’s capacity to manufacture intelligence.” BLOOMBERG
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