SiFive Raises $400 Million as Nvidia Backs RISC-V Push Into AI Data Center CPUs

New updates have been reported about SiFive.

SiFive has secured an oversubscribed $400 million funding round at a $3.65 billion valuation, marking a major capital infusion to expand its RISC-V–based CPU design business. Founded in 2015 by UC Berkeley engineers behind the open source RISC-V architecture, the company now sits at the center of a strategic bet that open, licensable CPU designs can become a meaningful alternative to x86 and Arm in high-performance and AI workloads.

The round was led by Atreides Management, with participation from Nvidia and a broad mix of venture, private equity, and hedge fund investors including Apollo Global Management, D1 Capital Partners, Point72 Turion, T. Rowe Price, and Sutter Hill Ventures, underscoring institutional confidence in SiFive’s model and market opportunity. SiFive continues to follow an Arm-style licensing approach, providing CPU designs rather than manufacturing chips, positioning its open and customer-neutral RISC-V IP as a scalable platform for partners.

This raise is SiFive’s first since March 2022, when it collected $175 million at a $2.33 billion pre-money valuation from investors such as Coatue Management, Intel Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, and Aramco Ventures, meaning the company has added more than $1 billion in valuation in two years on growing expectations for RISC-V adoption. Historically used mainly in embedded and low-power applications, RISC-V is now being pushed by SiFive into data center-class CPUs, targeting AI and high-performance computing environments.

Strategically, Nvidia’s participation is notable as it deepens technical alignment: SiFive’s CPUs are being designed to interoperate with Nvidia’s CUDA software stack and NVLink Fusion rack-scale systems, enabling alternative CPU options in Nvidia-powered “AI factories.” This move gives Nvidia a way to diversify beyond x86 and Arm providers, while giving SiFive access to the leading AI accelerator ecosystem and large data center customers. For executives, the key implications are that SiFive now has the capital, partners, and ecosystem hooks to pursue meaningful share in next-generation AI data center infrastructure, potentially reshaping competitive dynamics among CPU IP vendors and offering system builders an open, non-proprietary alternative at scale.