AI Chip Startup DensityAI in Advanced Funding Talks at $10B Valuation

DensityAI, an AI chip startup founded by former core members of Tesla's Dojo supercomputer project, is in advanced talks to raise several hundred million dollars at a post-money valuation of about $10 billion, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) is in talks to lead the round. The company has told potential investors it has secured an agreement under which Amazon Web Services (AWS) would purchase its chips if they meet specified performance targets.

The startup was founded in 2025 by Ganesh Venkataramanan, former head of the Dojo project, Bill Chang, former principal systems engineer at Dojo, and Ben Florin, former head of AI infrastructure at Dojo. Tesla disbanded the Dojo team temporarily in the summer of 2025.

DensityAI says its chip uses a unique memory layout with 3D DRAM stacking, placing memory cells directly atop the compute cores to shorten data travel during inference. The approach is technically challenging, as DRAM is temperature-sensitive and prone to deformation or damage when stacked over hot processing units.

The funding talks highlight strong investor interest in compute-startups even before their chips are mature. Etched, another AI chip company founded four years ago, raised $700 million in August 2026 at a $21 billion valuation. A16z also launched a $1.1 billion fund in August focused on chips, memory and other AI hardware components.