Chip designer Velaura AI valued at more than $1 billion in funding round

Chip designer Velaura AI valued at more than $1 billion in funding round Illustration shows computer motherboard and chip · Reuters Reuters Tue, August 18, 2026 at 8:01 AM EDT 2 min read STEP Aug 18 (Reuters) - Velaura AI said on Tuesday it raised $110 million in a Series A funding round that valued the chip-designing startup ‌at more than $1 billion, with investors backing its technology that can ‌lower power consumption and operating costs at AI data centers. The funding round was led by Seligman ​Ventures, with participation from new investor Capricorn Investment Group. Existing investors Samsung Catalyst Fund, StepStone Group and Maverick Silicon also participated. Here are some details: • Velaura AI develops low-power chips and software technologies for data centers and so-called physical AI applications, ‌including robotics and autonomous ⁠systems. • The startup said the funds will be used to speed up development and deployment of its AI products and ⁠hire engineers and customer-facing staff. • Earlier this year, Velaura announced Titan Core, its proprietary chip-design platform targeting greater efficiency and power savings in data center workloads. • "The next ​era of ​AI will be defined not only by ​better models, but also by ‌fundamentally better compute economics," Rajiv Khemani, co-founder and CEO of Velaura AI, said in a statement. • Velaura is engaged with three of the four largest cloud computing providers as potential customers, Khemani told Reuters, but he de…