General Compute raises $100 million Series A for inference-chip cloud services

General Compute, a cloud services provider focused on inference chips, has raised $100 million in a Series A round led by Blackbird Ventures and Abstract Ventures, with a post-money valuation of $800 million.

The company builds its cloud infrastructure using inference chips from Nvidia rivals including SambaNova, Positron and Cerebras. It has a $400 million chip purchase agreement with SambaNova, described as the first debt financing for inference chips. The startup was valued at $60 million after a May 2026 seed round.

A customer deal worth $100 million in annual recurring revenue paved the way for the round. General Compute differentiates by focusing on inference-oriented chips rather than GPUs, and by using smaller power sources, renting data center space and converting former bitcoin-mining sites for AI workloads.

Co-founder and CEO Finn Puklowski said the company expects to deploy 75 megawatts of computing capacity in 2027, with access to potentially 200 megawatts. Blackbird said its confidence stems partly from its investment in inference cloud company Baseten, and noted that chipmakers like Cerebras, Positron and SambaNova need distribution partners to scale.