Vaire Computing raises $4.5M for ‘reversible computing’ moonshot which could drastically reduce energy needs
With the rise of AI, energy and heat efficiency have once again become pressing concerns for companies that use and build chips. The skyrocketing demand for hardware to run AI models is dragging up energy bills, as these servers require vast numbers of chips and enormous cooling setups.
Vaire Computing, based in London and Seattle, is betting that reversible computing will be the way forward. It’s now raised $4 million in a Seed round to work on building silicon chips that would consume negligible amounts of energy and generate little heat, if any. The round was led by deep-tech fund 7percent Ventures and Jude Gomila, the co-founder of Heyzap. The company had previously raised $500,000, so this round brings its total funding to $4.5 million.
In reversible computing, instead of running a calculation in only one direction (inputs followed by outputs) and then feeding the output to a new calculation and running it again, the computing can be done in both directions (known as ‘time-reversible’ computing). Effectively, energy is retained inside the chip instead of being released as heat. The theory is that this method would generate negligible amounts of heat, vastly reducing energy consumption. (A better explanation of its potential lies in this essay by Azeem Azhar and David Galbraith).
Vaire Computing was founded by serial entrepreneur Rodolfo Rosini, and Hannah Earley, a researcher at the University of Cambridge who works on “unconventional computing” such as reversible and molecular computing.
Over a call, Rosini told me: “Close to 100% of the energy in a chip ends up being dissipated as heat. So you’re basically wasting it. But in a reversible chip, you actually never dissipate this energy. You don’t allow the energy to become heat, and you recycle it internally. This means that two things happen: One, the chip doesn’t get hot, and two, you only need a tiny amount of energy to make it work. So, it uses almost no energy, other than the same amount of energy that it has just recycled.”
The concept of reversible computing is not new, and there are a lot of challenges in the way before Vaire’s chips can become a reality, but Rosini thinks the shift to this new approach to computing would not be too dissimilar from how we switched from filament bulbs to LEDs. “The similarity is between an old light bulb based on incandescent filaments and LEDs,” he said. “LEDs are colder and more efficient, and there’s a cluster of them… This is virtually identical to reversible computing. You don’t have a single core that is super fast, you have a lot of smaller cores where each one is super efficient.”
He says a big advantage of chips that can do reversible computing would be their ability to be used on generic applications, just as normal CPUs are used today. “Other kinds of chips are domain-specific, but with computing, you can do anything… We could also build a CPU or GPU, and it would look like any other chip.”
When asked why the funding in the space is so low if the tech is as revolutionary as it sounds, Rosini said: “Because the amount of money that went into reversible computing and alternative chip architecture is almost nothing,” he said, pointing to the billions spent on quantum computing, photonics and GPUs.
“If you go outside these well-trodden areas and talk about building a brand new architecture, there’s absolutely nobody who will fund it. Secondly, we don’t really need a lot of money to make the first chip and prove the technology… Once we prove that, we’ll need a much larger round to actually build a chip,” he added.
For her part, Earley believes reversible computing could be used to make the most powerful computers. “I got involved in this area during my PhD in 2016,” she said. “Serendipitously, my PhD supervisor sent me the thesis of my friend who was at the University of Florida group that was looking into reversible computing. It got me interested in how I could apply it to my research field at the time, which was molecular programming. I started to think that reversible computing is interesting in its own right, particularly as it could make the most powerful form of computers possible. After completing my PhD, I was introduced to Rudolfo and we realized that we had the same vision.”
“Vaire Computing is different because its technology is innovative at a foundational level, positioning the company extraordinarily well to capture a huge chunk of the future AI chip, and ultimately, computer processor market,” Andrew J Scott, founding partner at 7percent Ventures, said in a statement.
The round also saw participation from Seedcamp, Clim8, Tom Knight (an inventor of modern reversible computing), and Jared Kopf, founder of Ramble.ai.
Additionally, Vaire has hired Mike Frank, a noted researcher in reversible computing, as the company’s senior scientist.
Vaire recently became one of only ten companies named to the second U.K. cohort of Intel Ignite, Intel’s global startup accelerator program for early-stage deep tech startups.
Vaire Computing, based in London and Seattle, is betting that chips that can do reversible computing are going to be the way forward for the world.
Preliminary findings by the European Commission investigating a controversial binary choice Meta has forced on regional users of its social neworks, Facebook and Instagram, since last fall does not comply…
The round was led by KKR and Teachers’ Ventures Growth, an investment arm of Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan.
RoboGrocery combines computer vision with a soft robotic gripper to bag a wide range of different items.
This is by no means a complete list, just a few of the most obvious tricks that AI can supercharge.
Identity.vc writes checks that range from €250,000 to €1.5 million into companies from the pre-seed to Series A stages.
Featured Article
In the early 1990s, a researcher at Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology began work on what would become Paro. More than 30 years after its development, the doe-eyed seal pup remains the best-known example of a therapeutic robot for older adults. In 2011, the robot reached…
18 hours ago
Apple’s AI plans go beyond the previously announced Apple Intelligence launches on the iPhone, iPad, and Mac. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, the company is also working to bring these…
One of the earlier SaaS adherents to generative AI has been ServiceNow, which has been able to take advantage of the data in its own platform to help build more…
India’s top AI startups include those building LLMs and setting up the stage for AGI as well as bringing AI to cooking and serving farmers.
We live in a very different world since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel. With global military expenditure reaching $2.4 trillion last…
Two separate studies investigated how well Google’s Gemini models and others make sense out of an enormous amount of data.
Featured Article
Some of the largest, most damaging breaches of 2024 already account for over a billion stolen records.
2 days ago
Welcome back to TechCrunch’s Week in Review — TechCrunch’s newsletter recapping the week’s biggest news. Want it in your inbox every Saturday? Sign up here. This week, Apple finally added…
Featured Article
There’s something of a trend around legacy software firms and their soaring valuations: Companies founded in dinosaur times are on a tear, evidenced this week with SAP‘s shares topping $200 for the first time. Founded in 1972, SAP’s valuation currently sits at an all-time high of $234 billion. The Germany-based…
2 days ago
Sarah Bitamazire is the chief policy officer at the boutique advisory firm Lumiera.
Crypto platforms will need to report transactions to the Internal Revenue Service, starting in 2026. However, decentralized platforms that don’t hold assets themselves will be exempt. Those are the main…
As part of a legal settlement, the Detroit Police Department has agreed to new guardrails limiting how it can use facial recognition technology. These new policies prohibit the police from…
Plaid’s expansion into being a multi-product company has led to real traction beyond traditional fintech customers.
He says that the problem is that generative AI is not human or even human-like, and it’s flawed to try and assign human capabilities to it.
Matrix is rebranding its India and China affiliates, becoming the latest venture firm to distance its international franchises. The U.S.-headquartered venture capital firm will retain its name, while Matrix Partners…
Adept, a startup developing AI-powered “agents” to complete various software-based tasks, has agreed to license its tech to Amazon and the startup’s co-founders and portions of its team have joined…
There are plenty of resources to learn English, but not so many for near-native speakers who still want to improve their fluency. That description applies to Stan Beliaev and Yurii…
NASA and Boeing officials pushed back against recent reporting that the two astronauts brought to the ISS on Starliner are stranded on board. The companies said in a press conference…
As the country reels from a presidential debate that left no one looking good, the Supreme Court has swooped in with what could be one of the most consequential decisions…
As Google described during the I/O session, the new on-device surface would organize what’s most relevant to users, inviting them to jump back into their apps.
Many VC firms are struggling to attract new capital from their own backers amid a tepid IPO environment. But established, brand-name firms are still able to raise large funds. On…
Welcome to Startups Weekly — Haje‘s weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. Editor’s…
The company “identified a security incident that involved bad actors targeting a limited number of HubSpot customers and attempting to gain unauthorized access to their accounts” on June 22.
VW Group’s struggling software arm Cariad has hired at least 23 of the startup’s top employees over the past several months.