Artificial intelligence chip company Cerebras Systems announced on Thursday a partnership with French open-source AI technology firm Mistral, assisting the latter in setting a new speed record. Mistral aims to compete with open-source rivals like Meta and China's DeepSeek, which shook the global market last month with their low-cost and high-performance technologies. All three companies are in competition with OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT.

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence, the investment boom in AI chip manufacturers has gradually intensified. Among them, Blaize has attracted wide attention in the market. Founded by a former Intel engineer, the company announced its plan to go public on NASDAQ through a SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company) on January 14, 2025. Blaize was established in 2011 and is headquartered in El Dorado Hills, California. To date, it has raised $335 million in investments, primarily from Samsung and Mercedes.

Canadian AI hardware startup Tenstorrent has recently announced that it successfully completed a funding round of nearly $700 million. This funding round totaled $693 million, bringing Tenstorrent's valuation to over $2.6 billion. The round was led by Samsung Securities and AFW Partners, with other investors including Hyundai Motor and Jeff Bezos's investment company Bezos Expeditions. Image source note: The image is AI-generated, licensed from Midjourney.

Recently, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has been actively pushing for a financing round of up to $150 million to support semiconductor startup RainAI. This initiative aims to challenge NVIDIA in an effort to capture a share of the artificial intelligence hardware market. RainAI's valuation has risen to $600 million in this financing, highlighting its growing impact in the field of high-performance and energy-efficient semiconductors. Image source note: The image is AI-generated.

Recently, AI chip company Groq, based in California, has reached a partnership agreement with Saudi Arabia's oil giant Aramco to establish a large data center in Saudi Arabia. The aim of this data center is to enhance Saudi Arabia's capabilities in the field of artificial intelligence and further promote the diversification of the country's economy. Groq's CEO, Jonathan Ross, stated that the data center is expected to be operational by the end of the year, initially equipped with 19,000 Language Processing Units (LPUs). Image source note: Picture

SoftBank recently officially announced the acquisition of the UK artificial intelligence chip company Graphcore, making it a fully-owned subsidiary. Although the specific transaction amount has not been publicly disclosed, Graphcore co-founder and CEO Nigel Toon stated that this is a positive outcome for most people. Graphcore was founded in 2016 and is headquartered in Bristol, UK, where it developed a new processor called the "Intelligent Processing Unit" (IPU). Unlike the Graphics Processing

SoftBank Group's stock price climbed due to Masayoshi Son's plan to establish a $10 billion AI chip company. Son will invest $30 billion, with plans to name the company Izanagi, competing in the global semiconductor market. This initiative could surpass Microsoft's investment in OpenAI, and Son has high hopes for the future of artificial intelligence. SoftBank's stock rose by 30%, as Son sees immense opportunities in the AI sector.

SoftBank Group founder Masayoshi Son plans to raise up to $100 billion through a new chip startup project named Project Izanagi. The initiative aims to establish an AI chip company that will compete directly with Nvidia. The project will contribute to the development of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), a field that Son is passionate about. This move is intended to make AGI a reality within the next decade, although it remains unclear whether the artificial intelligence processors of Project Izanagi will rely on the instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by Arm.