Kandou AI raises $225 million from SoftBank, Synopsys, and Maverick Silicon for AI chip development

Kandou AI, an AI chip startup founded by a former Goldman Sachs managing director, raised $225 million in a funding round led by SoftBank, with participation from Synopsys and Maverick Silicon. The company designs custom silicon optimized for AI inference workloads. The funding comes as hyperscalers and enterprise customers seek alternatives to Nvidia's dominance in AI hardware. Kandou's approach focuses on reducing the power consumption and cost of running trained models at scale. The round values Kandou at over $1 billion and will fund expansion of its engineering team and tape-out of its next-generation chip design.