Extropic
Assembly Line
Extropic raises $14.1M to build ‘physics-based computing’ hardware for generative AI
Extropic, a hardware startup led by former members of Alphabet Inc.’s quantum computing research team, announced that it has raised $14.1 million in seed funding. Kindred Ventures led the investment. It was joined by HOF Capital, Julian Capital, Marque VC, OSS Capital, Valor Equity Partners and Weekend Fund. Extropic says the round also saw the participation of more than a dozen other backers, including executives from Adobe Inc., Shopify Inc. and several venture-backed artificial intelligence startups.
It’s believed Extropic is building a chip optimized to run large language models, or LLMs. In a blog post, Verdon described the company’s technology as a “novel full-stack paradigm of physics-based computing” and detailed that it harnesses “out-of-equilibrium thermodynamics.” This hints that Extropic’s chip design incorporates concepts from non-equilibrium thermodynamics, an emerging branch of physics focused on studying phenomena such as chemical reactions.