Semiconductor startup Positron has secured $230 million in Series B funding, TechCrunch has learned exclusively. The company plans to use the capital to accelerate the deployment of its high-speed memory chips, a critical component for chips used for AI workloads, sources familiar with the matter told TechCrunch.
Among the investors participating in the round is Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), the country’s sovereign wealth fund, which is increasingly focused on building AI infrastructure, the sources said.
The Reno-based startup’s Series B round comes as hyperscalers and AI companies strive to reduce their reliance on longtime leader Nvidia. These companies include OpenAI, which, despite being one of Nvidia’s largest and most important customers, is would have dissatisfied with some of the company’s latest AI chips and has been looking for alternatives since last year.
Meanwhile, Qatar, through QIA, has accelerated a broader push towards so-called “sovereign” AI infrastructure – a priority repeatedly highlighted at Web Summit Qatar in Doha this week. Multiple sources told TechCrunch that the country views computing capacity as key to remaining competitive on the global economic stage and is positioning itself as one of the leading centers for AI services in the Middle East, fueling interest in startups like Positron.
The strategy is already taking shape with major commitments, including a $20 billion AI infrastructure. joint venture with Brookfield Asset Management this was announced in September.
Positron’s fundraising brings the three-year-old startup’s total capital to just over $300 million. The startup had already raised $75 million last year from investors including Valor Equity Partners, Atreides Management, DFJ Growth, Flume Ventures and Resilience Reserve.
The company says its first-generation Atlas chip, made in Arizona, can match the performance of Nvidia’s H100 GPUs for less than a third of the power. Positron focuses on inference – the computing needed to run AI models for real-world applications – rather than training large language models, which positions the company as demand for inference hardware grows as companies increasingly move away from creating large models and toward deploying them at scale.
Techcrunch event
Boston, Massachusetts
|
June 23, 2026
Sources tell TechCrunch that beyond its memory capabilities, Positron chips also perform very well in high-frequency and video processing workloads.
TechCrunch has contacted Positron for more information.
