silicon

Multiple venture capital firms in Silicon Valley are competing to secure GPU computing power to provide exclusive resources for their AI startups. a16z established a computing power pool of about 20,000 GPUs as early as 2024 and is negotiating expansion with data center companies Switch and Volta. General Catalyst plans to build a data center for its portfolio companies and has brought in the former head of NVIDIA DGX Cloud in May this year to oversee AI infrastructure operations.Even if AI startups complete their financing, they may not be able to rent GPUs in a timely manner. In April this year, major cloud providers like Microsoft were reported to prioritize allocating computing power to internal teams and large clients, leaving some startups facing months of waiting. a16z previously disclosed that during times of computing power shortages, prices that could originally be secured with a six-month contract might require a three-year commitment. Model training requires a large amount of GPU usage in a short period, while inference demand is difficult to predict, making it easy to waste funds by locking in computing power for several years in advance.a16z is concentrating on purchasing and leasing computing power through the Oxygen project, redistributing it to its portfolio companies, allowing them to access prices and contract terms typically reserved for large clients. In August this year, a16z co-led a $300 million financing round for Volta, which is valued at $2.4 billion, with investments covering both AI startups and data center companies providing computing power. The small venture capital firm Crucible Capital has built a cluster with 576 NVIDIA B300 GPUs for its portfolio companies to test, while also selling some computing power to a cutting-edge AI laboratory. This model allows venture capital firms to take on investments that were previously mainly borne by cloud providers and data center operators.

The venture capital firm Disruptive is raising up to $10 billion for a new fund, planning to invest in about 10 late-stage companies. Disruptive was founded by Alex Davis and has currently secured approximately $7.5 billion in funding commitments.

The GPU infrastructure financing platform Silicon Exchange has announced its launch, positioning itself as a financing method for artificial intelligence infrastructure. Users can hold real shares of GPU infrastructure, while the platform is responsible for deployment and hosting, and computing power clients use the related hardware.Silicon Exchange stated that users can visit its official website to view the first GPU vault. The official announcement has not disclosed the scale of the vault, hardware models, financing structure, or specific profit arrangements in this post.

The third-party AI inference infrastructure company, Silicon Flow, announced the completion of Phase II of its B+ round and C round financing. The company transforms computing power and models into directly callable Token services. By 2026, the cumulative equity financing amount has approached 2.9 billion yuan, and the amounts for these two rounds have not been disclosed.Based on the Token annual throughput in 2025, Silicon Flow ranks fourth among all Token suppliers in China, with a market share of 1.5%. The top three, Volcano Engine, Alibaba Cloud, and Baidu Smart Cloud, account for 42.7%, 32.5%, and 11.8% respectively, totaling about 87%. This round of investors includes the China Internet Investment Fund, Guoxin Fund, China Mobile Chain Long Fund, China Orient Asset International, as well as YaoTu Capital, Shengyi Capital, and Cathay Venture Capital continuing to invest.Silicon Flow's revenue in 2025 is projected to be 55.33 million yuan, with a net loss of 345 million yuan, and an overall gross margin of -24%. The company submitted its application to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange at the end of June and is currently applying for a main board listing under the 18C chapter "Uncommercialized Companies" rules. Beijing has just released the first provincial-level token economy special policy in the country, clearly proposing to build a "world-class token factory," and has listed inference engines, model and chip adaptation, and heterogeneous computing power as key directions.

According to the Industrial and Commercial Times, with the expansion of HBM and advanced logic below 2 nanometers, it is estimated that the global silicon wafer supply-demand gap will widen from about 8% by the end of 2026 to 15% in 2027 and 24% in 2028. GlobalWafers, Siltronic, and TSMC are expected to benefit from this. It is noted that mid-2027 will be a critical turning point; if the pace of supply expansion does not keep up, a new wave of shortages and rush buying may occur from the second half of 2027 to the first half of 2028.SEMI statistics show that the global silicon wafer shipment area reached 3.573 billion square inches in the second quarter of 2026, an increase of 9.1% quarter-on-quarter and 7.4% year-on-year. It is estimated that the global monthly production capacity of 12-inch silicon wafers will be about 10.69 million pieces in 2026, an increase of 7% year-on-year, with only about a 3% increase to 11 million pieces in 2027, and an increase of about 6% to 11.7 million to 11.76 million pieces in 2028. The new supply includes about 300,000 pieces from the second phase of GlobalWafers and about 100,000 pieces from Siltronic.It is estimated that the consumption of HBM silicon wafers will increase by 23% and 28% in 2027 and 2028, respectively; new general DRAM production capacity will gradually come online starting in 2027, with an additional monthly capacity of about 350,000 to 450,000 pieces by 2028. In terms of advanced logic, the consumption of logic process silicon wafers is expected to increase by 12% and 11% in 2027 and 2028, respectively. Currently, customer silicon wafer inventory remains at about 100 to 120 days, and it will take time to digest to the normal level of 50 to 70 days.

Silicon Valley angel investor Liron Shapira posted on X this morning, stating: "I assert (with 50% confidence): due to AI shaking the security and stability guarantees that people once believed Bitcoin had, the price of BTC will plummet more than 50% within the next two years."Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin rebutted this, saying: "I hold the completely opposite view. My fundamental reason is that, in the long run, I am quite optimistic about network security, and I believe the main challenge is how to smoothly transition through the transition period. Moreover, I believe BTC can at least properly handle all issues that do not require social consensus to resolve (for example, upgrading clients, mining pools, etc., to deal with network layer attacks fall into this category). Additionally, I believe the probability of hash algorithms or proof-of-work mechanisms being truly compromised is extremely low. I wanted to make a bet with you, but considering my current asset allocation (I guess you have the same view on Ethereum ETH), I have already staked about 90% of my wealth on this bet."

According to CryptoSlate, the Ethereum Layer 2 network Silicon announced that it has stopped accepting new bridging deposits as of September 2 and has initiated the shutdown process. Users must withdraw all assets by December 31, after which the network and block explorer will go offline, and remaining assets will be unrecoverable.There are still approximately $9.75 million in assets on-chain, including USDC ($2.66 million), WBTC ($2.54 million), ETH ($2.08 million), and USDT ($1.85 million). Assets bridged from the Ethereum mainnet can be directly withdrawn during the window period, but tokens issued directly on Silicon cannot be bridged directly and can only rely on the remaining on-chain liquidity for exchange, which may become increasingly difficult as the shutdown progresses. Silicon's Web3 wallet will also be deactivated.

According to Bloomberg, the physical AI company Lyte announced the completion of a $165 million Series C financing round, led by Maverick Silicon, with participation from Fidelity Management & Research, Atreides Management, Key1 Capital, and Ora Global, bringing the post-money valuation to $1.6 billion.Founded in 2021 by former Apple and PrimeSense engineers, Lyte focuses on providing a complete perception technology stack for robots, including custom chips, multimodal sensors, and spatial software. To date, the company has raised a total of $272 million.The funds from this round will be used to expand the production scale of perception chips and its LyteVision platform, as well as to advance AI perception capabilities and the commercialization of robotics.

According to the Economic Daily, semiconductor silicon wafers have seen a significant price increase for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic, covering the full range of specifications including 6-inch, 8-inch, and 12-inch, with an increase starting at 10%. Industry insiders believe this is the first price adjustment in over three years, and major Taiwanese silicon wafer suppliers such as GlobalWafers, TSMC, and Hejian are expected to see improvements in revenue and profitability.GlobalWafers stated that recent demand in some end markets has gradually improved, inventory adjustments in the supply chain are healthier than in the past, and market signals are more positive than last year, but prices still depend on the product, specifications, and customer situations. TSMC mentioned that under cost pressures and demand support, they have begun communicating price adjustments with customers, and operations in the second half of the year are expected to outperform the first half. Hejian indicated that they are actively negotiating price adjustments with customers and continuing to promote advanced packaging and related products.Industry analysis suggests that this round of price increases mainly reflects the rebound in chip demand driven by AI, with increased usage in advanced and mature processes, allowing the upstream silicon wafer industry to gradually feel the recovery. Currently, the negotiation progress varies among factories and customers, with some 12-inch polished wafers already subject to new quotes with double-digit percentage increases, and discussions for 8-inch and 6-inch products are also moving in a similar upward direction.

Silicon Data, a GPU market data infrastructure company, announced the completion of a $30.5 million Series A financing first closing, led by Valor Atreides AI Fund, with participation from CME Ventures, DRW, Samsung Next, VanEck, Jump Trading, Wintermute, and others. The funds will be used for GPU benchmark pricing, performance measurement, institutional and alternative data, as well as derivatives, insurance, and credit market risk infrastructure.Silicon Data currently collects data from approximately 100 GPU leasing platforms in over 40 countries worldwide, processing more than 150,000 verified price records daily. CME Group is planning to adopt Silicon Data's benchmark as the reference price for the proposed cash-settled GPU futures, pending regulatory approval.

According to market news, the CME Group and Silicon Data will launch computing power futures on October 5.

U.S. President Trump officially signed the executive order on polysilicon tariffs.

According to the South Korean media The Elec, GlobalWafers stated during the Q2 earnings call that the production lines for 12-inch, 8-inch, and 6-inch wafers are nearing full capacity, with some advanced 12-inch products experiencing supply constraints due to a surge in demand for AI chips, HBM, and advanced packaging. Shin-Etsu Chemical achieved double-digit growth in 12-inch shipments both year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter in Q2, and Sungrow also believes that customer inventory adjustments are nearing completion. Although SK Siltron is gradually releasing capacity from new production lines, it is still difficult to meet the growth rate of orders.Tight supply is driving changes in long-term contract models, and GlobalWafers signed a 10-year LTA (including advance payment) with Micron last month. Prices in the non-LTA market have begun to rise and are expected to continue to increase in the second half of the year. GlobalWafers stated that it is negotiating with customers to incorporate price adjustment mechanisms into new contracts, and Nexchip also emphasized the need for "broad and meaningful price increases" to support reinvestment. Industry insiders expect that as new factories from Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron come online, wafer demand will double in the second half of 2027, and supply shortages may further intensify.

According to Crypto Briefing, Silicon Valley AI startup Higgsfield AI is in talks for a new round of financing, planning to raise between $300 million and $500 million, with a pre-money valuation target of $5 billion.If the financing is completed at the target valuation, it would increase the company's valuation from approximately $1.3 billion in January 2026 by more than four times. Higgsfield has raised a total of $138 million to date, with investors including firms like Accel and Menlo Ventures.It is reported that the scale of this latest financing round will exceed approximately three times the total amount raised previously.

According to CoinDesk, Silicon Valley Bank has released a report stating that Bitcoin lending has entered a new institutional era after experiencing the 2022 crypto credit crisis, with stronger risk control, increased institutional participation, and declining borrowing costs. Bitcoin is being viewed as a collateral asset with immediate global liquidity, fast settlement, and interchangeability. Currently, several major banks in the United States have offered Bitcoin-backed credit services, with the total amount of crypto mortgages increasing by 49% year-on-year to $67 billion. Bitcoin lending platform Ledn estimates that the current consumer BTC mortgage market is about $3 billion, which could expand to $1 trillion over the next decade.The report points out that the collapses of Celsius, BlockFi, and Genesis from 2022 to 2023 exposed issues such as maturity mismatches and excessive leverage, making conservative underwriting and transparent risk management the foundation of the industry. Currently, Bitcoin mortgage interest rates range from 7.5% to 16%, and Silicon Valley Bank expects that participation from banks and private credit funds will gradually narrow the spread.

According to Axios, Silicon Valley venture capital firm Playground Global has completed fundraising of $475 million for a new fund, which will focus on investing in startups in the fields of artificial intelligence, automation, advanced computing, and deep tech.Playground Global was founded by Android co-founder Andy Rubin and others, and has long focused on AI infrastructure, robotics, and hardware innovation. This new fund indicates that, driven by the surge in generative AI and automation, capital continues to pour into the frontier technology sector.Playground Global is headquartered in Palo Alto, California, and previously completed fundraising of $410 million for its third fund in 2022. Its investment portfolio includes companies such as Agility Robotics, PsiQuantum, Skydio, Ultima Genomics, Virta Health, and Unconventional AI.