The latest funding round of the fabless semiconductor company was led by technology investment firm Coatue Management
SiFive HiFive1 RISC-V development board. (Credit: Gareth Halfacree from Bradford, UK/Wikimedia Commons)
SiFive, a California-based RISC-V chip technology firm, has secured $175m in a Series F funding round to take its valuation to more than $2.5bn.
The Series F round of the fabless semiconductor company was led by technology investment firm Coatue Management.
SiFive claimed that it is considerably fast-tracking the development of its RISC-V products, future roadmap, and ecosystem to get the unlimited potential offered by RISC-V for the company’s partners and customers.
RISC-V is an open standard instruction set architecture, whose inventors founded SiFive six years ago.
Coatue Management senior managing director Jaimin Rangwalla said: “We continue to be impressed by SiFive’s growth and challenge to proprietary legacy architecture IP providers.
“SiFive’s accomplishments in high-performance RISC-V IP enables future computing platforms to be built on an open, industry-wide base, allowing technology companies to design differentiated products for their target markets.”
So far, the RISC-V chip technology firm has raised more than $350m. This includes $61m secured in a Series E round in August 2020 led by SK hynix.
The company plans to use the funds to invest in global recruitment, expediting new product development, and the software ecosystem.
Among the company’s existing investors are AMD, Intel Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, Osage University Partners, Samsung Ventures, Western Digital Capital, and Spark Capital.
SiFive CEO and chairman Patrick Little said: “The market has spoken and made it abundantly clear that RISC-V computing will be competing for the heart of all future computing platforms. As the founder and market leader of RISC-V computing it’s our role to lead this ecosystem forward and offer customers advanced computing alternative to Arm and others.
“This valuation is a validation of our strategy, our incredible team, and our singular focus on building the leading portfolio of high-performance RISC-V compute products in the market.”
Last month, Intel named SiFive as one of its electronic design automation (EDA) alliance partners as part of a broader ecosystem alliance called IFS Accelerator.