By Stephen Nellis
SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 15 (Reuters) - Delos Data, a startup founded by veterans of Intel Corp, on Tuesday said it has raised $100 million to develop chips and software that can move data around faster inside AI data centers that are quickly becoming more complex than ever before.
In the early phase of the AI boom, data centers were often made up mostly of Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs) wired together with proprietary networking technology from Nvidia. But as the focus of those
data centers has shifted from training AI systems to fielding requests from users to have AI "agents" carry out tasks on their behalf, Nvidia rivals such as Cerebras Systems and Advanced Micro Devices have gained traction.
Even Nvidia itself has started offering multiple kinds of computing chips. In response to that new variety of computing chips, Delos Data has designed a complex set of network chips and software with a very simple goal: to help data center owners get all that expensive computing gear communicating as fast as possible, with the flexibility to adapt to whatever mix of computing chips the data center owner might choose, now or in the future.
"We don't know what the next infrastructure architecture is going to be for agentic (AI)," Delos Data Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder Dan Daly said in an interview. "But we do know that we can provide the quickest, fastest way to move that data around."
Pat Gelsinger, the former CEO of Intel who is now a partner with Playground, a venture capital firm that joined the Delos Data funding round, said computing chips waiting for data remain one of the biggest wastes of money and energy in AI data centers.
"I can have all the computers in the world, and if I can't get these devices communicating effectively with one another, I've got lots of hot hardware, burning watts and sitting here twiddling their thumbs," Gelsinger said.
Other investors in the funding round were Matrix Partners, Playground, Socratic Partners, Capricorn, Matter Venture Partners, IAG and DYNAMIQ.
(Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; editing by Lincoln Feast.)
