Drive Capital

Normal Computing has raised $50 million in strategic funding led by Samsung Catalyst Fund, bringing total funding to more than $85 million, to accelerate silicon design and solve the AI hardware energy crisis. Other new and existing investors include Galvanize, Celesta Capital, Drive Capital, Eric Schmidt's First Spark Ventures, Micron Ventures, Brevan Howard Macro Venture Fund, and ArcTern Ventures. We build AI for the semiconductor industry and are developing a new class of computing hardware, using our software to design our own hardware IP. We're partnered with more than half of the top ten semiconductor companies by revenue through Normal EDA, our purpose-built AI platform for semiconductors, earning the industry's trust to drive real production silicon. In parallel, we completed the tape-out of CN101, the world's first thermodynamic computing chip, targeting up to 1000x gains in energy efficiency for AI workloads like image and video generation. Grateful to our investors, customers, and team for their conviction in this work. If this is the type of mission you gravitate towards, see open roles here: https://lnkd.in/gfZ8i7YB Full announcement: https://lnkd.in/gjBnnna8

I am thrilled to share the news about our $17M Series A. Conduit Health was Rocky's idea, born out of his lived-in experience building Signify Health. As soon as we started digging in together, I got excited not just by the magnitude of the problem, but by how seemingly *solveable* it was. Just make it easy for the patients! Everything else will fall into place. Fast forward a few months, and our vision is materializing. Each week seems to blow the doors off of the previous one. We’re getting better every single day. We’ve built an amazing team in NY (and hiring!!!! check the comments!!) and are having so much fun solving these painful, complex insurance problems. We didn’t set out to start an “AI company,” but our use of AI has fundamentally expanded the aperture of what's even possible in this space. I can confidently say we’re building a healthcare provider unlike any that’s existed. I’m so happy to have met Molly Bonakdarpour, and am thrilled to welcome Drive Capital into the company. From the first five minutes of our very first meeting, it was clear she had this market mapped and knew exactly what specific problems we were tackling. I couldn’t imagine a better partner at the A than her. Big thank you to the investors who participated and led our earlier, never announced rounds: Byron Ling and Taylor Greene at Twelve Below, Timothy Young and Kristin McDonald at Eniac Ventures, Ross Fubini, Art Clarke and Lucy Wilmot at XYZ Venture Capital. Diede van Lamoen at Go Global and Russell and Daniel have been incredible as well. If you’re curious to learn more about what we’re solving, I wrote some words here: https://lnkd.in/gQAfZG2p

Here we go 🤝

Welding is one of the fundamental building blocks for shipbuilding. Yet you don't see many robots in the yard. Check out Heather Carroll's interview with Rebuilding the Fleet, where she dives into why robots that can see, think, and adapt are critical for the Navy and the future of shipbuilding. https://lnkd.in/gnYZsJUq