Meta to buy chip startup Rivos for AI effort, source says

By Jeffrey Dastin and Krystal Hu (Reuters) -Meta is acquiring the chip startup Rivos, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Tuesday, as the social media company looks to bolster its in-house semiconductor efforts. The Santa Clara, California-based startup, which is backed by Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan, is focused on designing chips based on the RISC-V architecture, an open-source alternative to the architectures made by Arm, Intel and AMD. The terms of the deal were unclear, according to the source. Meta and Rivos did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment. Meta has been one of Rivos' biggest customers and had been talking to the startup about a deal, a second source familiar with the matter said. The sources declined to be named as they were not authorized to discuss the information. Reuters exclusively reported in March that Meta was testing its first in-house chip for training AI systems as the company seeks to cut infrastructure costs linked to its spending on advanced AI tools. The Instagram and Facebook owner has spent heavily on sought-after AI chips from Nvidia. Rivos was seeking new funding at an over $2 billion valuation, The Information reported in August. Bloomberg News first reported on the potential deal. (Reporting by Jeffrey Dastin and Krystal Hu in San Francisco and Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur)

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