Ai Blaize will be the first AI chip startup to go public in 2025
Nvidia’s rise has sparked renewed interest from investors in AI chip startups. One of those, Blaize, which was founded by former Intel engineers, said it plans to become a public company through a SPAC deal in a listing on Nasdaq on Tuesday.
Founded in 2011, Blaize has raised $335 million in funding from major backers like Samsung and Mercedes-Benz. Located in El Dorado Hills, California, the company develops AI chips specifically targeted for edge applications. Whereas Nvidia’s chips are largely used in big data centers, Blaize’s offerings are intended to be embedded in smart devices like security cameras, drones and industrial robots.
“AI-powered edge computing is the future with low power consumption, low latency, low cost and better data privacy,” said CEO Dinakar Munagala, who spent almost 12 years at Intel.
While Blaize has so far only a tiny part of the enormous AI chip market, and it is losing to the tune of $87.5 million this year with just $3.8 million in revenues, per its prospectus, it stresses the huge capital expense involved in expanding chip manufacturing that is claimed to be based in the U.S.
“As a chip company, you need to make a lot of upfront investment before you can get that exponential growth,” Munagala told TechCrunch.
Blaize also claims $400 million of contracted business, including one signed purchase order with an unnamed defense organization in the EMEA (e.g., Middle East) for a system that could identify troops, detect small boats, and identify drones. Munagala chose against identifying the particular nation.
He told TechCrunch that Blaize expects to have a $1.2 billion valuation post-SPAC merger. It’s lower than private valuations of other AI chipmakers, such as Cerebras, which filed to go public last autumn seeking to double its $4 billion valuation. But Cerebras has not gone public yet because of investors’ concern about the company’s heavy dependence on a single Middle Eastern client, CNBC reported.
While Blaize shifted its focus, Cerebras is still concentrating on data center chips. Blaize’s public debut is a wager on an AI future when chips move out of central data centers and into a wider array of daily used devices.
“The all the hoopla around AI is in the data centers too, they haven’t realized the practical use cases which are actually changing lives, making money and production,” Munagala told TechCrunch. “We are committed to using AI in real-world applications.”
