Luminous Computing The Latest AI-Startup To Attract Big Funding

The promise of artificial intelligence and the better future it could bring has been around for a long time. However, the execution of AI has run up against some modern-day limitations concerning compute and memory.

A new generation of AI startups is seemingly setting out to push past those boundaries. Luminous Computing is one—and investors seem intrigued with its promise.

The Mountain View, California-based supercomputer company closed a $105 million Series A Thursday from investors including Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates.

Other investors in the round include Gigafund, 8090 Partners, Neo, Third Kind Venture Capital, Alumni Ventures Group, Strawberry Creek Ventures, Horsley Bridge, Modern Venture Partners and others. Founded in 2018, the company has raised $115 million to date, according to Crunchbase data.

Luminous is building a supercomputer capable of running more sophisticated AI applications—something difficult for most companies that can’t afford the expensive, power-consuming hardware currently needed to run complex AI systems.

“It’s an incredible time to be a part of the AI industry,” said Marcus Gomez, CEO and co-founder of Luminous. “AI has become superhuman. We can interact with computers in natural language and ask them to write a piece of code or even an essay, and the output will be better than most humans could provide. What’s frustrating is that we have the software to address monumental, revolutionary problems that humans can’t even begin to solve. We just don’t have the hardware that can run those algorithms.”

Luminous is not the only company looking at this problem—or attracting investor interest. Sunnyvale, California-based AI computer system developer Cerebras raised a $250 million Series F last November.

Just last month, San Jose, California-based Celestial AI, a developer of data center and edge AI computing solutions, closed a $56 million Series A.

Illustration: Dom Guzman

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