Exclusive report - According to sources, chip startup Bolt Graphics is seeking to raise $100 million at a valuation of approximately $700 million.

Max A. Cherney

Reuters San Francisco, October 15 - According to three sources familiar with the matter, chip design startup Bolt Graphics is seeking to raise approximately $100 million at a valuation of about $700 million, as part of its effort to develop graphics chips to compete with Nvidia NVDA.O and Advanced Micro Devices AMD.O.

Strong demand for artificial intelligence computing and the financial frenzy surrounding it have brought billions of dollars in profits to companies such as Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices, leading them to focus on improving foundational hardware. Bolt is instead dedicated to designing chips that focus on non-AI fields, such as high-precision computations performed by supercomputers and graphics processing for video games.

According to the sources, the financing is ongoing and the amount sought and valuation by Bolt could change. Reuters was unable to determine which investors are leading this round.

This round of financing will test whether investors are willing to support chip startups seeking to solve problems outside the field of artificial intelligence—while Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices have already invested billions of dollars developing AI-focused products.

Bolt CEO Darwesh Singh declined to comment on the fundraising or specific terms, but said the process is “progressing smoothly.”

This Silicon Valley-based startup is initially aiming at a smaller set of application scenarios, planning to first focus on professional markets such as 3D artists and game developers, and eventually expand into the gaming graphics processing unit (GPU) field. Developing gaming chips can be particularly complex, as any new hardware would need to support thousands of games, requiring a significant amount of supporting software.

ZEUS chips eye the scientific computing sector

This week, Bolt completed its first round of testing for the Zeus GPU architecture, which is designed for physical simulation applications. The company plans to produce its final chips using TSMC's 2330.TW process. Bolt is designing the Zeus chips for scientific computing, chip design, and professional rendering—some of which require higher-precision calculations (i.e. FP64).

In the past ten years, due to the high cost of producing cutting-edge chips and the long ramp-up cycles, venture capital firms have been hesitant to support chip startups. Bolt has spent approximately six years on chip and hardware development.

So far this year, investment in artificial intelligence has attracted enormous attention, especially within the chip industry. According to Crunchbase data, in the first five months of 2026, investors poured approximately $10.7 billion into semiconductor startups—a pace that could exceed the global total of $12.2 billion in 2025.

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