SiFive secures $400 million in a Series G funding round, achieving a valuation of $3.65 billion in its last funding round prior to going public.

      In summary: SiFive, the RISC-V chip intellectual property firm established by Berkeley engineers who developed the open-source instruction set architecture, secured $400 million in an oversubscribed Series G funding round on April 9, 2026, with a valuation of $3.65 billion. This round was spearheaded by Atreides Management and supported by Nvidia, Apollo Global Management, D1 Capital Partners, Point72 Turion, T. Rowe Price Investment Management, Capital Group, Prosperity7 Ventures, and Sutter Hill Ventures. CEO Patrick Little noted this as the company’s last private funding round prior to an initial public offering.

      Open source, closed competition

      RISC-V (pronounced “risk five”) is an open-source instruction set architecture that defines how a processor interprets and executes commands, developed at the University of California, Berkeley, starting in 2010. Unlike proprietary architectures from Arm Holdings and Intel, RISC-V is available for implementation, extension, and commercialization without any royalties or usage limits. SiFive was founded in 2015 by three key architects of the project: Krste Asanović, Andrew Waterman, and Yunsup Lee, alongside David Patterson, a Turing Award recipient and co-author of a key text in computer architecture. The company’s business model mirrors that of Arm’s: it designs CPU intellectual property and licenses that IP to customers for integration into their own silicon, rather than manufacturing chips directly. The main distinction is that SiFive’s designs operate on an architecture free from control by any single company.

      This autonomy gained more commercial importance in March 2026 when Arm introduced its AGI CPU, its first in-house silicon product in 35 years, with Meta and OpenAI as initial customers. This shift transformed Arm from a neutral IP licensor to a company with hardware objectives, creating competition that has traditionally driven technology buyers toward open-standard options and raising the demand for a competitor independent of any proprietary architecture. Intel sought a different avenue in this space; in 2021 the chipmaker proposed over $2 billion to acquire SiFive, but the deal fell through due to valuation disagreements. Since then, Intel has partnered with Elon Musk’s Terafab as a foundry collaborator, dedicating its 18A process node to a $25 billion AI compute facility backed by Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI, a strategic pivot that removes Intel as a potential acquirer or competitor in the RISC-V IP licensing arena.

      The Series G: investor details and motivations

      The $400 million Series G round was led by Atreides Management, a Boston-based investment firm helmed by Gavin Baker, who previously managed Fidelity’s OTC Portfolio before establishing Atreides in 2019. New investors included Nvidia, Apollo Global Management, D1 Capital Partners, Point72 Turion, and T. Rowe Price Investment Management, while existing shareholders Prosperity7 Ventures, Capital Group, and Sutter Hill Ventures also took part. The round closed oversubscribed, bringing SiFive’s total valuation to $3.65 billion, an increase from the $2.5 billion valuation set during the Series F in March 2022. Nvidia’s involvement in this round is significant from both a technical and financial perspective: in January 2026, SiFive announced its integration of NVLink Fusion into its high-performance data center platform, allowing RISC-V-based CPUs to connect with Nvidia GPUs via a coherent, high-bandwidth interconnect that minimizes latency and enhances system utilization for large-scale AI inference. This compatibility positions SiFive’s CPU IP to complement the Vera Rubin platform Nvidia revealed at GTC 2026, its next-generation GPU architecture aimed at agentic AI workloads.

      The broader investment landscape reflects a growing demand for custom silicon among hyperscale companies. Amazon committed $50 billion to its Trainium chip initiative in its April 2026 shareholder letter, indicating that in-house AI silicon is vital infrastructure rather than an optional improvement. Conversely, the agreement between Google, Anthropic, and Broadcom for custom AI compute illustrates a similar strategy, utilizing dedicated ASICs to lessen reliance on standard processors in hyperscale inference environments. SiFive proposes a unique alternative for hyperscale clients: customizable RISC-V CPU IP that is architecturally independent and based on an open standard that no one acquirer can monopolize. “Hyperscale customers have clearly indicated that it’s essential to expedite the availability of open-standard alternatives for the data center,” stated CEO Patrick Little. “Their ongoing demand is for customizable CPU solutions in IP form, allowing them to distinctly differentiate their data center compute offerings.”

      Usage of the capital

      SiFive has identified three key areas for deploying the capital from Series G. The largest portion is earmarked for advanced research and development, aimed at expanding the roadmap of high-performance scalar, vector, and matrix RISC-V CPU IP, accelerator cores, and system IP targeted at data center applications. The second allocation focuses on software ecosystem