{"id":225000,"date":"2025-12-10T05:23:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-10T05:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/225000\/"},"modified":"2025-12-10T05:23:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T05:23:10","slug":"unconventional-ai-confirms-its-massive-475m-seed-round","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/225000\/","title":{"rendered":"Unconventional AI confirms its massive $475M seed round"},"content":{"rendered":"<p id=\"speakable-summary\" class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Naveen Rao, the former head of AI at Databricks, has raised $475 million in seed capital at a $4.5 billion valuation for his new startup, <a href=\"https:\/\/unconv.ai\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Unconventional AI<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed Ventures, with participation from Lux Capital and DCVC. The funding is a first installment toward the goal of up to $1 billion for the round, <a rel=\"nofollow noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2025-12-08\/ai-computer-startup-hits-4-5-billion-valuation-in-seed-round?utm_source=newsletter&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosprorata&amp;stream=top\" target=\"_blank\">Rao told Bloomberg<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">TechCrunch was first to report, back in October, <a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2025\/10\/03\/sources-naveen-raos-new-ai-hardware-startup-targets-5b-valuation-with-backing-from-a16z\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">that Unconventional AI was seeking this mega funding<\/a> for Rao\u2019s new startup, although the final valuation is marginally lower than the $5 billion sources told us he was seeking. If he does eventually raise as much as $1 billion, we\u2019ll see how that impacts his company\u2019s value.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Unconventional AI is set on building a new, energy-efficient computer for AI. Rao previously <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/NaveenGRao\/status\/1971304223573934456?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1971304223573934456%7Ctwgr%5E046d387fd439586b7d19e6f62cfa8bab806a7d6d%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftechcrunch.com%2F2025%2F10%2F03%2Fsources-naveen-raos-new-ai-hardware-startup-targets-5b-valuation-with-backing-from-a16z%2F\" rel=\"nofollow\">wrote on X<\/a> that his goal is to create a computer that is \u201cas efficient as biology.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Databricks acquired Rao\u2019s previous startup,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2023\/06\/26\/databricks-picks-up-mosaicml-an-openai-competitor-for-1-3b\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">MosaicML in 2023<\/a>, for $1.3 billion. Prior to MosaicML, Rao co-founded the machine learning platform\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2016\/08\/09\/intel-buys-deep-learning-startup-nervana-systems-for-a-reported-350-million\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Nervana Systems<\/a>, which Intel Corp. acquired in 2016 for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vox.com\/2016\/8\/9\/12413600\/intel-buys-nervana-350-million\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">reportedly<\/a> more than $400 million.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Naveen Rao, the former head of AI at Databricks, has raised $475 million in seed capital at a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":101887,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[261],"tags":[22132,291,289,290,9670,18,19,6257,17,120935,120936,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-225000","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-a16z","9":"tag-ai","10":"tag-artificial-intelligence","11":"tag-artificialintelligence","12":"tag-databricks","13":"tag-eire","14":"tag-ie","15":"tag-in-brief","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-lightspeed","18":"tag-seed-capital","19":"tag-technology"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115693604280101357","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=225000"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/225000\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101887"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=225000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=225000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=225000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}