Positron raises $51.6M to revolutionize AI inference with purpose-built transformer hardware

AI hardware startup Positron has secured $51.6 million in Series A funding co-led by Valor Equity Partners, DFJ Growth, and Atreides Management, with participation from 1517 Fund, Flume Ventures, Unless, and Resilience Reserve, as the Nevada-based company scales production of its breakthrough inference-first accelerators designed specifically for transformer models and large language models.

Founded in 2023, Positron focuses on fundamental inefficiency of running AI inference on general-purpose GPUs that were originally designed for graphics rendering. The company's flagship Atlas system delivers the world's first purpose-built hardware for LLM inference, providing 3-4 times better performance per dollar and per watt compared to traditional GPU-based solutions.

Central to Positron's success is their FPGA-based architecture optimized from the ground up for transformer workloads, enabling enterprises to run popular open-source LLMs with high token throughput and long context lengths while drastically reducing total cost of ownership and power consumption. The platform seamlessly supports any HuggingFace Transformers Library model with zero modification required and provides OpenAI API-compliant endpoints for easy integration.

The company has rapidly progressed from founding to shipping production systems, deploying full-scale racks to major cloud providers and serving customers across networking, gaming, content moderation, and token-as-a-service industries. Positron's next-generation Titan system, launching in 2026, promises even greater efficiency and scalability without requiring expensive liquid cooling or complex networking infrastructure.

With AI inference costs becoming a significant bottleneck for widespread AI deployment, Positron's specialized hardware approach positions the company well for providing alternatives to expensive GPU infrastructures. The funding will accelerate product development, manufacturing scale, and market expansion as demand grows for cost-effective AI inference solutions.

Founders: Mitesh Agrawal, Thomas Sohmers, Edward Kmett

Sources: Positron, CB Insights, Crunchbase