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General Compute Secures $400 Million Loan Using Inference Chips as Collateral
General Compute received a $400 million loan from Upper90 using inference-specific chips as collateral. The deal follows the startup's $15 million seed round in May and its plans to build an inference neocloud with SambaNova silicon.
Jul 17, 8:00 AM·1m read1 source
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General Compute received a $400 million loan from Upper90. The financing uses inference-specific chips as collateral. General Compute was founded by CEO Finn Puklowski. The company raised a $15 million seed round in May to build an inference neocloud using SambaNova silicon.
Its SN50 chips are designed for inference and are power-efficient without requiring expensive water-cooling systems. General Compute states its SN50 chips provide 16 times faster inference than GPU-based clouds. Upper90 previously financed GPU purchases by Crusoe in 2021.
Upper90 co-founder and CEO Billy Libby, a former Goldman Sachs quantitative trader, stated that Upper90 financed Nvidia GPUs as the first group to do so. Libby stated that Upper90 looked for an inference player last year. Finn Puklowski stated that getting together with Upper90 signals capital organizing and the fragmenting of Nvidia's monopolistic dominance.
TensorWave is partnering with AMD on AI infrastructure.
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