A $2.5bn ask from a Sequoia-backed newcomer

Nuvacore, a six-month-old semiconductor startup backed by Sequoia Capital, is raising hundreds of millions of dollars at a valuation of about $2.5bn, Reuters reported exclusively on Friday, citing two people familiar with the fundraising. Nuvacore declined to comment, according to the report. The company has not announced a round, and the figures are the sources' account of a deal that has not closed.

The round remains open, and the final valuation and the amount raised could change, Reuters reported. We were not able to read the Reuters article on its own site; this account draws on the wire text as syndicated and on a summary published by Investing.com. Neither names a lead investor for the round or gives a precise amount. Sequoia led a seed round that Nuvacore announced earlier this year, according to the wire text, which does not give its size. Komposite has not independently verified the figures.

The Information had earlier reported that the startup was raising $200m or more, according to the report. Investing.com's summary says the $2.5bn valuation had not previously been disclosed. Because neither gives a valuation for the seed round, there is no earlier price against which to measure the ask, and we have not tried to supply one.

Nuvacore is based in San Jose, California, and is developing a central processing unit for data centres, the report said. It has yet to release a product. Its approach is to "build the core functionality of the chip" before committing to an instruction-set architecture such as Intel and AMD's x86 or Arm, according to the report, which could free it from the constraints of either.

The founders are semiconductor engineers Gerard Williams, John Bruno and Ram Srinivasan. Williams, a former Apple executive, founded Nuvia, which Qualcomm bought for $1.4bn in 2021, according to the report. By our arithmetic, the $2.5bn ask is about 1.8 times that price. The comparison is loose: it sets a prospective valuation of one company against the completed sale price of another.

The market Nuvacore is aiming at is changing. Demand for data-centre CPUs has risen because AI systems need processors to coordinate specialised chips and to run autonomous AI agents, the report said. Intel and AMD have long dominated the market, while Arm-based designs, including custom CPUs used by Amazon and Microsoft, have made inroads. Nvidia has also entered with its Vera CPU, which chief executive Jensen Huang expects to bring in $20bn in sales in the fiscal year ending in January, according to the report. That is Nvidia's own expectation as relayed by Reuters.

Investor appetite for chip startups has risen with AI infrastructure spending. Semiconductor startups attracted about $10.7bn in the first five months of 2026, against $12.2bn raised globally in all of 2025, according to Crunchbase data cited in the report. By our arithmetic, the five-month figure is about 88 per cent of the full-year 2025 total.

The ask rests on a team's record and a market's growth rather than on sales. Nuvacore has no product on the market, and the valuation could move before the round closes. Until the company or its investors confirm terms, the $2.5bn remains a figure from two unnamed sources.

The largest chip buyers have also been designing their own silicon, which is the market a new CPU designer has to sell into. Large valuations at an early stage have featured in our coverage before: Komposite reported on Saturday that TypeSafe AI raised $870m at a $7.5bn valuation, a completed round announced by the company, which is a different footing from the unconfirmed Nuvacore talks.