Unconventional AI, a new startup led by former Databricks VP of AI Naveen Rao, has emerged from stealth with a massive $475 million fundraise in its seed round at a valuation of $4.5 billion.
Lightspeed and Andreessen Horowitz led the round, with participation from Sequoia, Lux Capital, DCVC, Future Ventures, Jeff Bezos, and others. The startup noted that Rao will also invest $10 million personally as part of the round.
The San Francisco, California-based company is working on a new computational substrate to address what it calls an imminent energy bottleneck in AI, postulating that AI demand will soon outpace global energy capacity. “AI has exponential demand but is limited by (linear) energy build-outs,” Rao said in a post on X, adding that the company’s goal is “biology-scale efficiency in 20 years.”
In a statement announcing its emergence from stealth, Unconventional AI noted that the rise of AI is pushing computation beyond its traditional role. “AI is fundamentally distinct from other forms of computation. It is redefining productivity,” the company stated, arguing that if current projections hold, “computation will become constrained by global energy supply within the next 3–4 years.”
Unconventional AI aims to design new hardware and a software system inspired by biological intelligence.
The company said neural networks today run on deterministic abstractions layered on analogue circuitry, creating inefficiencies. Instead, it plans to create a software layer that directly taps into the physical properties of silicon, explaining that its method will involve building a biology-scale model of intelligence that can be tested like a system in a wind tunnel.
“Neurons use their inherent physical properties to build intelligence; we are building silicon circuits that demonstrate similar non-linear dynamics,” the announcement read.
Rao left Databricks in September 2025 to build Unconventional AI, teaming up with co-founders Sara Achour, MeeLan Lee, and Michael Carbin.
The co-founders wrote on the blog that Unconventional AI’s mission is to rethink computing from first principles, underscoring the idea that the human brain uses only 20 watts of power even for complex functions. “At Unconventional, we’re aiming to use every watt more effectively; we’re doing it by going to first principles on how to build an intelligence substrate,” they noted.
The company is now hiring across hardware, software, and algorithm design roles. “Developing this novel machine will be a complex undertaking,” it asserted, adding that it would require tapping into talent capable of challenging assumptions and reasoning from first principles.
Unconventional AI’s launch comes amid intensifying industry concern about the resource demands of large-scale AI systems and growing investment in alternative compute architectures.
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