SiFive raises $400m Series G at $3.65bn valuation in final round before IPO
April 10, 2026 – 1:17 pm
In short:
SiFive, the RISC-V chip IP firm founded by Berkeley engineers who created the open-source instruction set architecture, raised $400 million in an oversubscribed Series G on April 9, 2026, at a valuation of $3.65 billion. The round was led by Atreides Management and backed by Nvidia, Apollo Global Management, D1 Capital Partners, Point72 Turion, T. Rowe Price Investment Management, Capital Group, Prosperity7 Ventures, and Sutter Hill Ventures. CEO Patrick Little described it as the company’s final private funding round before an initial public offering.
Open source, closed competition:
RISC-V (pronounced “risk five”) is an open-source instruction set architecture, developed at the University of California, Berkeley from 2010 onwards. Unlike proprietary architectures maintained by Arm Holdings and Intel, RISC-V is free to implement, extend, and commercialise without per-unit royalties or usage restrictions. SiFive was founded in 2015 by three of RISC-V’s principal architects: Krste Asanović, Andrew Waterman, and Yunsup Lee, alongside David Patterson, a Turing Award winner. The company designs CPU intellectual property (IP) and licenses it to customers who integrate it into their own silicon, rather than fabricating chips itself.
That independence became more valuable in March 2026 when Arm launched its AGI CPU with Meta and OpenAI as debut customers, positioning itself from a neutral IP licensor into a company with direct hardware ambitions. Intel attempted to acquire SiFive outright in 2021 but the deal collapsed. Intel has since joined Elon Musk’s Terafab as a foundry partner, committing its 18A process node to a $25 billion AI compute facility.
The Series G: who invested, and why:
The $400 million Series G was led by Atreides Management. New investors include Nvidia, Apollo Global Management, D1 Capital Partners, Point72 Turion, and T. Rowe Price Investment Management. Existing shareholders Prosperity7 Ventures, Capital Group, and Sutter Hill Ventures also participated. The round closed oversubscribed and lifts SiFive’s total valuation.