附近上门

AI cloud infrastructure startup raised $333 million in growth financing at a $3.5 billion valuation, marking the decade-old startup鈥檚 first outside round of financing.

The deal was co-led by , the venture arm of semiconductor company 鈥� underscoring the fierce competition between chipmakers to provide AI infrastructure for enterprises.

was the other lead investor in the deal. West Palm Beach, Florida-based Vultr says it plans to use the new capital to acquire more graphics processing units, or GPUs, which are in hot demand to power large language models.

鈥淰ultr鈥檚 deep experience delivering secure, compliant and scalable cloud infrastructure and their deployment of AMD Instinct accelerators positions them as an innovative cloud solutions provider,鈥� , AMD鈥檚 senior vice president and chief strategy officer of corporate development, said in a . 鈥淲e share Vultr鈥檚 mission to empower enterprises and AI innovators with unparalleled access to high-performance compute for AI model development and deployment and are proud to support their growth.鈥�

Along with rivals and , AMD and its venture arm have been active investors in startup funding deals this year for AI-related companies. They include:

• In March, AMD Ventures took part in the $175 million Series C for optical interconnectivity startup , whose photonic fabric platform helps separate compute and memory, making processing extensive AI faster and computing more energy-efficient;
• In May, AMD Ventures and participated in 鈥檚 huge $1 billion round that valued the data labeling and evaluation startup at $13.8 billion;
• In July, large language model creator locked up a $450 million investment that counted AMD Ventures as well as Nvidia as investors;
• AMD led a $250 million round for , a startup that has created liquid foundation models 鈥� or lightweight, general-purpose AI models that need less data and compute power 鈥� earlier this month; and
• AMD Ventures, Intel Capital and Nvidia all participated in a $155 million Series D for optical interconnect startup , also earlier this month.

鈥淎MD is trying to figure out how to become more competitive with Nvidia,鈥� , a research vice president in cloud and edge services at research firm , , speaking about the Vultr funding. 鈥淔or AMD to be able to get good billing with an up-and-coming cloud provider like Vultr will help them get more visibility in the market.鈥�

Related reading:

• Eye On AI: AMD鈥檚 Big Deal Is Just Their Latest In AI
• Corporate Venture Deal Numbers Are Down Despite Big AI Headlines
• Microsoft, Nvidia Lead In Investing In AI Startups, But Others Close Behind
• Chip Startup Celestial AI Lands Massive $175M Series C
• Scale AI Raises $1B In Accel-Led Round; Hits $13.8B Valuation
• Cohere Raises $500M At $5.5B Valuation
• The Week鈥檚 Biggest Funding Rounds: Fintech鈥檚 Big Week
• Ayar Labs, Latest Optical Interconnect Startup To Raise Big, Hits Unicorn Status

Illustration: