Cornelis raises $205 million to challenge Nvidia with open AI networking fabric
Quick Look
Cornelis, an AI networking technology company spun off from Intel in 2020, announced a $205 million funding round led by IAG Capital Partners and launched its Active Compute Fabric product designed to reduce GPU idle time by enabling simultaneous data processing and transmission, positioning itself as an open-architecture alternative to Nvidia's proprietary ecosystem.
AI-generated summary
Why It Matters
Cornelis spun off from Intel in 2020 to develop networking technology for AI chips, aiming to reduce GPU idle time caused by data transfer bottlenecks.
Cornelis, a company creating networking technology to help AI chips communicate more effectively, announced Monday that it has raised $205 million in a funding round led by IAG Capital Partners.
It also announced a product it calls Active Compute Fabric, a network technology that targets the fact that much GPU time is wasted waiting for data to arrive. Cornelis hopes to address this with a networking fabric that lets chips process and send information at the same time.
The company, which spun off from Intel in 2020, is competing with Nvidia by offering an open architecture, meaning customers can use a variety of GPU and accelerator hardware with Cornelis’ networking fabric. Though Nvidia chips can technically run on other networking fabrics, they’re optimized to run on Nvidia’s own software, making it much easier — and more enticing — for customers to use Nvidia’s full GPU stack. Cornelis is part of a new wave of AI infrastructure companies emerging to break apart Nvidia’s market dominance, piece by piece (or chip by chip, one could say).
Cornelis has already started shipping its product and is working on a new generation of it, expected to be released later this year.
What to Watch
AI outlook — possibilities, not facts
Cornelis will release a new generation of its Active Compute Fabric later this year
Likely · Within months
Open Questions
- What specific performance improvements does Active Compute Fabric deliver?
- Which customers have adopted Cornelis' technology so far?
- How does Cornelis' pricing compare to Nvidia's networking solutions?
