(Bloomberg) — Chip startup SiFive Inc. raised $175 million from investors such as Intel Corp. and Qualcomm Inc., giving it enough funding to work toward going public.
The investment values the business at $2.5 billion, SiFive said in a statement Wednesday. The cash, in addition to the $210 million that the company gained from a sale of a unit this week, is enough to support its operations and growth until it does an initial public offering, Chief Executive Officer Patrick Little said.
SiFive and the company’s investors are betting it can shake up the $550 billion semiconductor industry by rethinking its fundamental technologies. The startup designs chips that are based on the RISC-V architecture, an attempt to use open-source standards to make the technology cheaper and more accessible to customers.
Until now, RISC-V has mostly been used for simpler designs. But under Little, a former Qualcomm executive, the company is focusing on higher-end processor designs that will be used in computers. Such products, which can sell for hundreds of dollars, offer bigger royalties.
Little said Nvidia’s Corp.’s failed acquisition of rival Arm Ltd. has increased interest in his company’s offerings and RISC-V in general. Arm and Intel are the only other providers of the design fundamentals that underpin chips essential to the computer industry.
In 2020, SiFive raised $90 million at a valuation of $510 million.
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