Positron Raises $230m as Qatar Bets on Alternatives to Nvidia in the Global AI Chip Race

Semiconductor startup Positron has secured $230 million in Series B funding, underscoring growing investor appetite for alternatives to Nvidia as demand for artificial intelligence infrastructure intensifies and the industry searches for more efficient ways to run AI systems at scale.

The funding round, which TechCrunch learned about exclusively, was led by investors including the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), the country’s sovereign wealth fund. The capital will be used to accelerate the deployment of Positron’s high-speed memory chips. This component has become increasingly central to AI performance as workloads shift from model training to real-world deployment, according to people familiar with the matter.

The Reno-based company’s latest raise lifts its total funding to just over $300 million in three years, marking a rapid accumulation of capital for a startup operating in one of the most competitive segments of the semiconductor industry. Positron previously raised $75 million last year from investors such as Valor Equity Partners, Atreides Management, DFJ Growth, Flume Ventures, and Resilience Reserve.

Positron’s momentum comes at a time when hyperscalers and AI developers are reassessing their heavy dependence on Nvidia, which has dominated the market for AI accelerators. Some of Nvidia’s largest customers have been exploring alternative suppliers, driven by concerns around power consumption, cost, and the pace of innovation. OpenAI, one of Nvidia’s most prominent customers, has been reported to be evaluating options beyond Nvidia’s latest chips as it looks to diversify its compute stack.

At the center of Positron’s pitch is Atlas, its first-generation chip manufactured in Arizona. The company claims Atlas can match the performance of Nvidia’s H100 GPUs while consuming less than a third of the power. That focus on energy efficiency is increasingly important as data centers grapple with rising electricity costs and capacity constraints, particularly as AI inference workloads scale rapidly across consumer and enterprise applications.

Unlike many startups that target the training of massive language models, Positron is positioning itself squarely in inference, the phase where trained models are run to generate responses, analyze data, or process video and speech in production environments. Industry analysts say this segment is poised for explosive growth as companies move from experimentation to deployment, creating sustained demand for hardware optimized for speed, efficiency, and predictable performance.

Sources familiar with Positron’s technology told TechCrunch that its chips also show strong results in high-frequency computing and video-processing workloads, expanding their appeal beyond traditional text-based AI applications. That breadth could help the company tap into sectors such as media, surveillance, autonomous systems, and financial services, where low latency and efficient data movement are critical.

Qatar’s participation in the funding round highlights a broader strategic push by the Gulf state to secure a foothold in global AI infrastructure. Through QIA, Qatar has been directing capital into what it describes as “sovereign” AI capabilities, viewing compute capacity as a strategic asset tied to economic competitiveness. That message was repeatedly reinforced at Web Summit Qatar in Doha this week, where government officials and investors framed AI infrastructure as essential national plumbing rather than a purely commercial play.

The strategy is already being backed with significant capital. In September, Qatar announced a $20 billion joint venture with Brookfield Asset Management focused on AI infrastructure, signaling a long-term commitment to data centers, compute platforms, and the ecosystems around them. Investments in startups like Positron fit into that broader ambition to position the country as a regional hub for AI services in the Middle East.

For Positron, the challenge now shifts from fundraising to execution. The AI chip market is crowded with well-capitalized players, and scaling manufacturing, securing customers, and proving performance claims in real-world deployments will be critical. Yet the combination of strong investor backing, a clear focus on inference, and growing dissatisfaction with incumbent solutions suggests the startup is entering the market at a moment when customers are more open than ever to new options.

As AI workloads continue to spread across industries, the race is no longer only about building the biggest models, but about running them efficiently, reliably, and at scale. Positron is betting that its approach to memory and power efficiency can carve out a meaningful share of that future.