Exclusive: Positron raises $230M Series B to take on Nvidia’s AI chips

Positron, a semiconductor startup based in Reno, has raised $230 million in a Series B funding round led by investors including the Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), the country’s sovereign wealth fund. This funding comes amid growing efforts by hyperscalers and AI companies, such as OpenAI, to reduce dependence on Nvidia’s AI chips. Qatar’s investment aligns with its broader strategy to develop sovereign AI infrastructure and position itself as a leading AI services hub in the Middle East, supported by a $20 billion AI infrastructure initiative announced in September. Positron, founded three years ago, has now raised over $300 million in total capital, including a previous $75 million round last year. The company’s first-generation chip, Atlas, manufactured in Arizona, reportedly matches the performance of Nvidia’s H100 GPUs while consuming less than a third of the power. Positron focuses on AI inference hardware—used to run AI models in real-world applications—rather than training large language models, addressing the