Home / Technology / Taalas Unveils AI Chip: Faster, Cheaper AI?
Taalas Unveils AI Chip: Faster, Cheaper AI?
20 Feb
Summary
- Taalas secured $169 million in new funding, totaling $219 million.
- The startup developed a custom chip for AI models using novel silicon printing.
- This approach promises faster and more cost-effective AI inference capabilities.
Canadian chip startup Taalas announced this week it has secured $169 million in new funding, adding to its total investment of $219 million. The company has developed a groundbreaking chip designed to enhance artificial intelligence applications by offering greater speed and cost-efficiency.
Taalas' innovative approach involves printing AI model components onto silicon, creating bespoke chips tailored for specific models. This customized design, combined with high-speed static random-access memory (SRAM), is key to its performance advantage. CEO Ljubisa Bajic explained that this "hardwiring" contributes significantly to the chip's speed.
The fabrication process, handled by TSMC, takes approximately two months for a customized chip, a considerably shorter timeframe compared to the six months needed for processors like Nvidia's Blackwell. Taalas plans to deploy a chip capable of running advanced models by the end of the year.
