Social media giant Meta has announced plans to acquire semiconductor startup Rivos for strengthening its in-house chip development for ̉AI. The deal was confirmed by the company’s VP of engineering, Yee Jiun (YJ) Song, on Tuesday in a LinkedIn post.
He said that the acquisition will “help us accelerate our vision for scalable compute to power our AI ambitions.”
This deal is also aimed at accelerating Meta’s custom chip programme, the Meta Training and Inference Accelerator (MTIA). The financial terms of the agreement have not been disclosed yet, and neither company has responded to AIM’s queries regarding the development.
“Given the success of our first two AI accelerators, we are eager to accelerate and expand our MTIA roadmap. Rivos has deep technical expertise and experience designing and developing the full stack of AI systems,” Song said.
Rivos, based in California, specialises in chips built on the open-source RISC-V architecture. The company had been seeking funding at a valuation of around $2 billion earlier this year, according to reports. Meta has also been one of Rivos’ key customers, according to Reuters.
Cut Reliance on NVIDIA
Meta spends billions each year on GPUs from NVIDIA, the market leader in AI hardware. Developing custom chips is part of its strategy to reduce costs and reliance on external suppliers.
The company has pledged up to $72 billion in capital expenditure this year, with a large share going towards AI infrastructure, including a new data centre in Louisiana.
CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made AI the company’s top priority as it seeks to compete with OpenAI and Google. Earlier this year, Meta explored an $800 million offer to acquire Korean chip startup FuriosaAI, though the bid was rejected.
Meta first began testing its in-house chip for AI training earlier this year. The company is also working with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) to manufacture chips.
Reports suggest that Meta’s AI-related spending is a significant portion of its projected expenses for 2025, ranging from $114 billion to $119 billion, including up to $65 billion in capital expenditures.
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