Particle.news
Download on the App Store

Upscale AI Secures $200 Million to Challenge Nvidia With SkyHammer AI Networking

The raise positions the startup to begin shipping SkyHammer this year as an open-standard alternative to NVSwitch.

Overview

  • The Series A was led by Tiger Global, Premji Invest, and Xora Innovation, bringing total funding to more than $300 million.
  • Upscale says the capital will expand engineering, sales, and operations as it moves from design into commercial deployment.
  • The company plans to ship SkyHammer custom ASICs both as standalone silicon for hyperscalers and as integrated switch blades and racks.
  • SkyHammer targets rack-scale AI interconnects dominated by Nvidia’s NVSwitch, with reported support for UALink and ESUN and integration with SONiC.
  • Investors include Intel Capital and Qualcomm Ventures, with the company citing early hyperscaler interest and providing limited public technical details such as a memory semantic load‑store design and collective acceleration.