Overview
- Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed co-led the $475 million seed, with Lux Capital, DCVC, Databricks, and Jeff Bezos participating, and CEO Naveen Rao investing $10 million personally.
- The financing is the first tranche of a planned raise of up to $1 billion, according to Rao.
- Unconventional AI aims to build silicon that leverages analog and neuromorphic principles to approach biology‑level efficiency for machine learning.
- Rao says the effort will be a multi‑year research program with no product expected within two years, though the company plans to start releasing research findings in the coming months.
- The company was co‑founded by Rao, MeeLan Lee, Sara Achour, and Michael Carbin, combining backgrounds in analog circuits, systems, and programming models from industry and academia.