Spark Capital
5K posts
@sparkcapital
References available upon request.
We’re building an LLM chip that delivers much higher throughput than any other chip while also achieving the lowest latency. We call it the MatX One. The MatX One chip is based on a splittable systolic array, which has the energy and area efficiency that large systolic arrays are famous for, while also getting high utilization on smaller matrices with flexible shapes. The chip combines the low latency of SRAM-first designs with the long-context support of HBM. These elements, plus a fresh take on numerics, deliver higher throughput on LLMs than any announced system, while simultaneously matching the latency of SRAM-first designs. Higher throughput and lower latency give you smarter and faster models for your subscription dollar. We’ve raised a $500M Series B to wrap up development and quickly scale manufacturing, with tapeout in under a year. The round was led by Jane Street, one of the most tech-savvy Wall Street firms, and Situational Awareness LP, whose founder @leopoldasch wrote the definitive memo on AGI. Participants include @sparkcapital, @danielgross and @natfriedman’s fund, @patrickc and @collision, @TriatomicCap, @HarpoonVentures, @karpathy, @dwarkesh_sp, and others. We’re also welcoming investors across the supply chain, including Marvell and Alchip. @MikeGunter_ and I started MatX because we felt that the best chip for LLMs should be designed from first principles with a deep understanding of what LLMs need and how they will evolve. We are willing to give up on small-model performance, low-volume workloads, and even ease of programming to deliver on such a chip. We’re now a 100-person team with people who think about everything from learning rate schedules, to Swing Modulo Scheduling, to guard/round/sticky bits, to blind-mated connections—all in the same building. If you’d like to help us architect, design, and deploy many generations of chips in large volume, consider joining us.
We’re thrilled to announce that we have raised $300M at a $5B valuation. The round is led by IVP and CapitalG, both doubling down on their investment in Baseten, and joined by 01A, Altimeter, Battery Ventures, BOND, BoxGroup, Blackbird Ventures, Conviction, Greylock, and NVIDIA. Read more here: baseten.co/blog/announcin…
Science is too slow. At Edison, we are integrating AI Scientists into the full stack of research, from basic discovery to clinical trials. We want cures for all diseases by mid-century. We have raised a $70M seed to get started. Join us. We need cracked software engineers who want to work on finding cures rather than selling ads and generating slop. If you’re reading this, you’re probably a candidate. We need brilliant AI researchers who want to figure out how AI will accelerate real-world science. We need scientists and researchers with deep expertise in biology, biotech, and pharma who want to figure out how to integrate AI deeply into scientific workflows, from ideation to experimentation, and how to measure success or failure. We need extraordinarily talented generalist operators across BD, sales, product management, and partnerships who can focus on getting our tools into the hands of pharmaceutical companies. If any of these roles sound like you, get in touch. We are also expanding access to our platform. Our goal is to accelerate science writ large. To that end, we will continue to give academics and students 650 credits/mo indefinitely. I can’t promise we’ll keep this up forever, but we will try. Kosmos will still cost 200 credits, and the other agents (Analysis, Literature, etc.) will cost 1 or 2 credits. All paid users will have access to our regular agents, like our Analysis agent, Literature agent, and so on, for free via the UI. API access will still be paid, and users without a paid subscription will continue to get 10 credits per month for those agents. Our $200/mo subscription for 650 credits/mo is staying in place for now, but might be phased out at our next major product update. Along the lines of accelerating science, we’re also doing a major release of PaperQA today, our flagship open source literature agent, as part of our commitment to open science. In the short run, expect major improvements to Kosmos, including the ability to automatically access data, the ability to steer its exploration, and the ability to converse directly with its world model. In the long run, expect exponentially increasing rates of scientific discoveries, in biology and elsewhere. Our round is led by Triatomic Capital, Spark Capital, and a major US institutional biotech investor. We are also joined in this round by existing investors Pillar VC and Susa Ventures, two exceptional early-stage funds who backed us at founding, along with Striker Venture Partners, Hawktail VC, Olive VC, and a host of exceptional angels that includes famous AI researchers, the CEOs of multiple frontier AI labs, and leadership of major biotech and pharma companies.
The world’s businesses needed a better way to connect and grow. Nuvo is making it happen. Congratulations to them for $45M raised and their launch today! I'm thrilled to share us at @sparkcapital leading their last round alongside our friends @sequoia - @schreier and team:
1/ Today, @Mercury announced a $300 million Series C in a mix of primary & secondary funding at a $3.5B valuation, led by @Sequoia, with participation from @sparkcapital, @MarathonMP, @coatuemgmt, @CRV, & @a16z. I’m deeply humbled by the growth we’ve experienced. 🧵
