San Francisco – Extropic, a pioneering hardware startup, has successfully raised $14.1 million in seed funding to accelerate the development of its novel thermodynamic computing paradigm for generative AI. The company, co-founded by physicist Guillaume Verdon, known online as "Beff – e/acc," aims to revolutionize AI computation by harnessing the principles of out-of-equilibrium thermodynamics.
The funding round saw participation from a diverse group of investors, including Kindred Investments, Buckley Ventures, HOF Capital, Julian Capital, Marque VC, OSS Capital, Valor Equity Partners, and Weekend Fund. This significant capital injection underscores growing investor confidence in Extropic's vision to create AI accelerators that are orders of magnitude faster and more energy-efficient than current digital processors.
Guillaume Verdon, who previously led a quantum computing team at Alphabet's X research unit, expressed strong commitment to this endeavor. "I would die before giving up bringing thermodynamic computing to the world. This is why we are going to win," Verdon stated in a recent social media post, emphasizing the company's ambitious goals. Extropic's approach moves away from traditional digital logic, embracing noise as an asset rather than a liability, which they believe is more aligned with how biological systems process information.
Founded in 2022, Extropic emerged from stealth mode in March 2024, unveiling its Litepaper which details its full-stack hardware platform. The company's technology seeks to address the limitations of Moore's Law and the increasing energy demands of large-scale AI models by building chips optimized for probabilistic computations inherent in generative AI. They have already fabricated a prototype superconducting processor, with plans for room-temperature semiconductor-based devices.
Extropic's innovative strategy positions it as a potential disruptor in the competitive AI hardware market, offering a path to scale generative AI more efficiently. By leveraging fundamental physics, the company aims to provide a sustainable and powerful computing solution for the future of artificial intelligence.