Epic Venture Partners announced it has invested $8.1 million into Rain AI (a Sam Altman-backed startup). This was part of Rain AI’s $25 million Series A extension round. Rain AI is an AI chip startup headed by CEO William Passo, with the goal of building cost- and energy-efficient AI hardware.
GPUs have been powering the AI revolution, but AI’s demand for energy remains insatiable. Rain AI is taking on this core problem via its proprietary in-memory computing technology, which will bring the AI technologies of tomorrow, from personalized robotics to putting models the size of ChatGPT on your phone.
Rain AI’s technology eliminates the biggest drivers of energy usage. And unlike other AI hardware where 90% of energy is consumed by data flow, Rain AI’s proprietary digital in-memory compute technology combines memory and processing. By co-designing their chips with some of the best AI models, they are able to dramatically reduce the energy consumption of AI computing compared to other solutions.
Rain AI is now in talks with major hyperscalers and semiconductor companies to license its IP. It plans to launch its first chip ready for customers in 2025. The use cases will span multiple industries, including drones, VR goggles, smartphones, robotics, wearables, etc.
Rain AI was launched in 2017 and quickly gained recognition after being accepted into Y Combinator in 2018. And the company secured a $5 million seed round led by Sam Altman (co-founder of OpenAI) and subsequently relocated to Silicon Valley to further its research and development efforts.
In 2022, Rain AI raised a $25 million Series A round and the company has now raised over $40 million from notable investors including Sam Altman, co-founder/CEO of OpenAI, which created ChatGPT; Jeff Rothschild, a founding engineer at Facebook; Daniel Gross, co-founder of AI startup Cue (acquired by Apple); Oliver Cameron, Founder of autonomous vehicle startup Voyage (Acquired by Cruise); Jaan Tallinn, founding engineer at Skype; and Scott Gray, an AI hardware expert and early member of OpenAI’s technical team.
Rain AI also assembled a strong advisory board that includes Dr. Jackson Hu, the former CEO and chairman of UMC, the second largest semiconductor manufacturer in the world, and Dr. Arijit Raychowdhury, a leading expert of in-memory compute and Chair of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Georgia Tech University.
KEY QUOTES:
“The AI problem is an energy problem. Being able to run the most advanced models locally in any form factor is AI’s holy grail, including running massive LLMs, such as GPT-4, on any device. Creating this future with abundant and scalable artificial intelligence is critical for the coming AI revolution. We’ve never seen more customer demand for our technology than we do now, and I’m excited for what’s to come in 2024 and beyond.”
– William Passo, CEO of Rain AI
“AI is defining the Fourth Industrial Revolution, yet we are only scratching the surface on use cases across enterprise, military, and consumer applications. There’s a wide range of capabilities to explore. Rain AI’s in-memory compute technology and upcoming AI accelerator chips will continue to unlock the myriad of use cases and allow them to be performed faster, more efficiently, and with more privacy protection at the Edge.”
– Arthur Lee, managing partner of Epic Venture Partners
“Custom AI hardware needs to evolve as rapidly as software to fully capitalize on the continued advancements in AI. We are excited to support Rain AI’s mission in achieving this.”
– Bryan Edelstein, managing partner of Epic Venture Partners
