Reno-based AI chip startup Positron raises $23.5 million in funding from Flume Ventures, Valor Equity Partners, Atreides Management, and Resilience Reserve among several others.
The 2023-founded Positron offers AI inference technology for AI computing and will use the new funds to scale production of its US-manufactured, energy-efficient AI chips. It aims to offer cost-effective alternative to Nvidia’s AI hardware.
“With this funding, we’re scaling at a pace that AI hardware has never seen before–from expanding shipments of our first-generation products to bringing our second generation accelerators to market in 2026,” said Mitesh Agrawal, CEO of Positron. “Our solution is growing rapidly because it outperforms conventional GPUs in both cost and energy efficiency, while delivering AI hardware that eliminates reliance on foreign supply chains.”
To tackle AI capex, escalating costs and vendor lock-in, Positron offers a high-performance, energy-efficient alternative to customers. Positron’s Atlas systems are presently achieving 3.5x better performance per dollar and 3.5x greater power efficiency than Nvidia H100 GPUs for inference.
Leveraging a memory-optimized architecture that hits >93% bandwidth utilization (vs. 10–30% for GPUs), Positron’s FPGA-powered servers support trillion-parameter models while offering plug-and-play compatibility with Hugging Face and OpenAI APIs. These systems deliver 70% faster inference at 66% lower power consumption than H100/H200 setups, slashing data center CapEx by 50%.
Positron’s first-generation Atlas systems are entirely designed, manufactured, and assembled in the U.S. It has built a fully American supply chain, ensuring that its AI hardware is designed, fabricated, and assembled within the United States.
“Investing in domestic AI hardware is a strategic imperative when it comes to securing America’s global AI posture,” said Scott McNealy, Operating Partner at Flume Ventures. “Positron is proving that world-class AI compute doesn’t have to come from overseas, and we’re excited to support their mission to make the U.S. a leader in AI hardware manufacturing.”
Beyond cost savings, Positron’s technology is addressing the growing power constraints of AI infrastructure. Many legacy data centers struggle to support high-power GPUs, which consume as much as 10,000 watts per server—far beyond the capacity of traditional data centers. Positron’s energy-efficient architecture allows these facilities to participate in AI computing without requiring massive infrastructure upgrades.
“The demand for AI compute is skyrocketing, and enterprises are searching for viable alternatives that are energy and cost efficient for the long term,” said Rob Reid, Co-founder of Resilience Reserve. “What sets Positron apart is not just its cost efficiency, but its ability to bring AI hardware to market at an unprecedented speed and provide a high performance per watt. Their innovative approach is enabling businesses to scale AI workloads without the typical barriers of cost and power consumption.”
