Velaura AI has raised $110 million in Series A financing at a valuation exceeding $1 billion as the semiconductor company works to commercialize ultra-low-power computing technology for AI data centers, robotics, drones and other Physical AI systems. Seligman Ventures led the round, with participation from new investors Capricorn Investment Group and Prosperity7 Ventures. Existing investors Mayfield, Maverick Silicon, MARA, Premji Invest, Samsung Catalyst Fund and StepStone Group also participated.
The financing comes as electrical power availability is becoming an increasingly important constraint on the expansion of AI infrastructure.
Velaura is targeting that challenge with silicon and software designed to increase the amount of AI computing that can be performed within existing power and thermal limits.
The company is simultaneously targeting Physical AI applications, where robots, drones, autonomous systems and other intelligent machines must operate within substantially tighter energy and thermal budgets than large data centers.
Proceeds from the Series A will accelerate development and commercialization of Velaura’s AI compute portfolio, including its recently announced Titan Core silicon platform.
The funding will also support expansion of engineering and customer-facing teams as Velaura deepens collaborations with strategic partners and customers building next-generation AI infrastructure and Physical AI products.
Velaura said it is already engaged with multiple hyperscalers.
Its Titan Core technology consists of proprietary digital chip intellectual property and a silicon design platform intended to improve the efficiency of mathematical operations used by AI accelerators.
The company said Titan Core can deliver a 2-4x improvement in performance per watt for those operations while maintaining performance.
The underlying technology has already been deployed commercially in more than 30 million ASICs using leading semiconductor process nodes.
Velaura said that deployment has demonstrated manufacturing yield and reliability at commercial scale.
The company is now applying that technology to AI accelerators while extending its ultra-low-power architecture into Physical AI applications.
Velaura sees a growing need for more efficient AI computing as the industry’s demand for processing continues increasing faster than available electrical infrastructure.
Hyperscalers are committing significant capital to new AI data centers, but power availability and infrastructure development can create long lead times for new capacity.
Greater performance per watt could allow operators to increase AI computing capacity without requiring a proportional increase in electrical power.
Improved energy efficiency could also reduce thermal requirements and total infrastructure costs associated with operating large AI clusters.
The requirements become even more restrictive in Physical AI.
Robots, autonomous machines and drones frequently operate with limited battery capacity and cooling capabilities, making energy-efficient silicon critical to both performance and operating time.
Velaura’s leadership and engineering organization includes executives and engineers with backgrounds at Apple, NVIDIA, Google, Qualcomm and Marvell.
The team also includes semiconductor executives who have previously built and scaled chip companies and collectively shipped billions of devices.
Investors are backing the company as it attempts to apply that experience across two rapidly developing AI compute markets.
Seligman Ventures described Velaura as its first Physical AI investment, citing the combination of commercially validated low-power silicon technology and the opportunity across both hyperscale AI infrastructure and intelligent physical systems.
The investment also represents another partnership between Mayfield and Velaura’s leadership. Mayfield Managing Partner Navin Chaddha said the firm has previously worked with CEO Rajiv Khemani three times and with Manu Gulati once before Velaura.
With the new financing, Velaura plans to move beyond the underlying technology validation demonstrated by its existing ASIC deployments and expand commercialization of purpose-built compute infrastructure for AI workloads.
KEY QUOTES:
“Every advance in AI, from reasoning models to embodied intelligence, creates demand for more compute, and ultimately more power.”
“The next era of AI will be defined not only by better models, but also by fundamentally better compute economics. Velaura is building the ultra-low-power silicon and software foundation needed to scale AI from hyperscale data centers to intelligent machines operating in the physical world.”
Rajiv Khemani, Co-Founder and CEO of Velaura AI
“AI infrastructure is increasingly constrained by the cost and complexity of delivering more compute. Velaura AI’s approach has the potential to improve performance per watt in ways that could reduce total cost of ownership, ease thermal limitations, and enable more AI capacity within existing infrastructure.”
“Those are meaningful advantages for customers seeking to scale AI from hyperscale data centers to autonomous systems.”
Patrick Moorhead, Founder, CEO and Chief Analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy
“Physical AI represents one of the next major frontiers for AI, and it will require a fundamentally different approach to compute centered on extreme power efficiency.”
“Velaura is our first investment in Physical AI, reflecting our thesis-driven approach to backing category-defining technology companies. Rajiv Khemani, Manu Gulati and the team bring together proven low-power silicon expertise, deep software and systems experience, and technology that has already been deployed in more than 30 million production ASICs. That combination, together with the rapidly expanding opportunity across Physical AI and hyperscale AI infrastructure, gave us strong conviction to lead this investment.”
Umesh Padval, Managing Partner at Seligman Ventures
“AI’s energy footprint is on track to become one of the most significant infrastructure challenges of this decade. Velaura is attacking that problem at its root, the silicon itself, with technology that has shipped at scale.”
“The combination of measurable efficiency gains and commercial validation, applied to the highest-growth areas of AI, is what we look for.”
Dipender Saluja, Managing Partner of Capricorn’s Technology Impact Funds
“Velaura AI is making ultra-low-power computing practical for Physical AI and dramatically more efficient in the data center, addressing two of the most significant opportunities in AI infrastructure.”
“As hyperscalers and Physical AI applications demand increasingly energy-efficient, purpose-built solutions, Velaura is developing the silicon and software platform to power both. At Mayfield, we invest in people first. This is our fourth partnership with Rajiv Khemani and our second with Manu Gulati, and we have had the privilege of working with them since Velaura’s inception. We’re excited to support this exceptional team as they build the next generation of energy-efficient AI compute infrastructure.”
Navin Chaddha, Managing Partner at Mayfield
