Nuvacore seeks funding at $2.5bn valuation to develop CPUs Nuvacore’s approach involves developing the essential features of its chip before committing to a specific architecture. · Verdict · mine95/Shutterstock.com. Anwesha Pattanaik Mon, October 12, 2026 at 6:45 AM EDT ANTH.PVT NVDA -0.52% Trade NVIDIA on Coinbase Trading disclosure Trading disclosure The above button links to Coinbase. Yahoo Finance is not a broker-dealer or investment adviser and does not offer securities or cryptocurrencies for sale or facilitate trading. Coinbase pays us for certain activity generated through this link. Prices displayed are informational.
Nuvacore, a microchip startup based in California, is raising hundreds of millions of dollars to finance the development of a new central processor intended for deployment in data centres, reported Reuters, citing sources familiar with the matter.
The fundraising efforts are expected to value the company at approximately $2.5bn, a figure not previously reported.
The company, which has yet to bring a product to market, is seeking to capitalise on increased demand for central processing units (CPUs) fuelled by the rise of data-intensive applications, such as chatbots including Anthropic's Claude.
CPUs play a key role in managing data flows for servers running Nvidia's AI chips and are responsible for running autonomous AI software known as agents.
Nuvacore's current funding round remains open, and sources have stated that both the size of the capital raise and the final valuation could still change.
The Information previously reported the company was looking to raise $200m or more.
The data centre CPU market has traditionally been dominated by companies such as Intel and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), both of which use x86 technology.
Chip designs based on Arm's architecture, like those created for Amazon and Microsoft custom CPUs, have also been used in data centres, but have gained less market share.
Nuvacore's approach involves developing the essential features of its chip before committing to a specific architecture, such as x86 or Arm.
Last month, the company outlined this strategy as an attempt to allow engineers to bypass the typical constraints of existing architectures and refine the chip design to better meet the needs of common data centre and AI workloads.
Nuvacore said this could result in a design optimised for the computations most frequently required by such infrastructure. The startup was founded by engineers John Bruno, Gerard Williams and Ram Srinivasan.
Nuvacore completed an initial seed funding round earlier this year, led by Sequoia Capital.
Interest in semiconductor startups has increased as investor appetite for AI hardware companies has strengthened, with large venture capital investments returning to the sector after years of focus on software.
Major chip manufacturers have reported surging demand for CPUs. This year, Intel stated it was unable to produce enough chips to meet customer needs.
AMD cited a rise in CPU sales, while Nvidia launched its Vera CPU and expects $20bn in related revenue for the fiscal year ending January.
"Nuvacore seeks funding at $2.5bn valuation to develop CPUs" was originally created and published by Verdict, a GlobalData owned brand.
