Meta plans to buy chip startup Rivos to advance its AI chip efforts, expanding in-house MTIA development and reducing reliance on external suppliers.
Meta intends to acquire the chip startup Rivos to bolster its in-house semiconductor efforts, the social media company said on Tuesday. The Santa Clara, California-based startup, which Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan backs, focuses on designing chips based on the open-source alternative to the architectures developed by Arm, Intel, and AMD.
Meta declined to disclose the financial terms, and Rivos did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.
Rivos brings expertise in building full-stack AI systems, Meta’s Vice President of Engineering, Yee Jiun Song, said in a post.
Meta aims to expand its work on the Meta Training and Inference Accelerator (MTIA), its family of custom-built in-house chip accelerators, he said.
The chip startup was nearing new funding at a valuation of about $2 billion, a source told Reuters earlier. Meta has been one of Rivos’ biggest customers and has been discussing a deal with the startup, a second source familiar with the matter said. The sources declined to be named as they were not authorized to discuss the information.
“Our custom silicon work is progressing quickly and this will further accelerate our efforts,” a Meta spokesperson said when contacted by Reuters.
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Reuters exclusively reported in March that Meta was testing its first in-house chip for training AI systems, as the company seeks to reduce infrastructure costs associated with its spending on advanced AI tools.
The owner of Instagram and Facebook has been spending heavily on sought-after AI chips from Nvidia.
Bloomberg News first reported on Meta’s intention to buy Rivos.
