AI cloud infrastructure startup Vultr raised $333 million in growth financing at a $3.5 billion valuation, marking the decade-old startup’s first outside round of financing.

The deal was co-led by AMD Ventures, the venture arm of semiconductor company AMD — underscoring the fierce competition between chipmakers to provide AI infrastructure for enterprises.

​​LuminArx Capital Management was the other lead investor in the deal. West Palm Beach, Florida-based Vultr says it plans to use the new capital to acquire more graphics processing units, or GPUs, which are in hot demand to power large language models.

“Vultr’s deep experience delivering secure, compliant and scalable cloud infrastructure and their deployment of AMD Instinct accelerators positions them as an innovative cloud solutions provider,” Mathew Hein, AMD’s senior vice president and chief strategy officer of corporate development, said in a statement. “We share Vultr’s mission to empower enterprises and AI innovators with unparalleled access to high-performance compute for AI model development and deployment and are proud to support their growth.”

Along with rivals Nvidia and Intel, AMD and its venture arm have been active investors in startup funding deals this year for AI-related companies. They include:

• In March, AMD Ventures took part in the $175 million Series C for optical interconnectivity startup Celestial AI, whose photonic fabric platform helps separate compute and memory, making processing extensive AI faster and computing more energy-efficient;
• In May, AMD Ventures and Intel Capital participated in Scale AI’s huge $1 billion round that valued the data labeling and evaluation startup at $13.8 billion;
• In July, large language model creator Cohere locked up a $450 million investment that counted AMD Ventures as well as Nvidia as investors;
• AMD led a $250 million round for Liquid AI, a startup that has created liquid foundation models — or lightweight, general-purpose AI models that need less data and compute power — earlier this month; and
• AMD Ventures, Intel Capital and Nvidia all participated in a $155 million Series D for optical interconnect startup Ayar Labs, also earlier this month.

“AMD is trying to figure out how to become more competitive with Nvidia,” Dave McCarthy, a research vice president in cloud and edge services at research firm International Data Corp, told The Wall Street Journal, speaking about the Vultr funding. “For AMD to be able to get good billing with an up-and-coming cloud provider like Vultr will help them get more visibility in the market.”

Related reading:

• Eye On AI: AMD’s Big Deal Is Just Their Latest In AI
• Corporate Venture Deal Numbers Are Down Despite Big AI Headlines
• Microsoft, Nvidia Lead In Investing In AI Startups, But Others Close Behind
• Chip Startup Celestial AI Lands Massive $175M Series C
• Scale AI Raises $1B In Accel-Led Round; Hits $13.8B Valuation
• Cohere Raises $500M At $5.5B Valuation
• The Week’s Biggest Funding Rounds: Fintech’s Big Week
• Ayar Labs, Latest Optical Interconnect Startup To Raise Big, Hits Unicorn Status

Illustration: Dom Guzman