Founded by a former Intel engineer, AI chip company Blaize is about to go public

With the rapid development of artificial intelligence, investment enthusiasm among AI chip manufacturers has gradually heated up. Among them, Blaize company has attracted widespread attention from the market. The company, founded by former Intel engineers, announced that it will be listed on Nasdaq through a SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company) on January 14, 2025.

Blaize was founded in 2011 and is headquartered in El Dorado Hills, California. It has received US$335 million in investment so far, mainly from well-known companies such as Samsung and Mercedes-Benz. Unlike Nvidia, which is mainly used in large data centers, Blaize focuses on making AI chips for edge applications. These chips are mainly integrated into smart products such as security cameras, drones and industrial robots, aiming to meet the needs of low power consumption, low latency and cost-effectiveness.

Blaize CEO Dinakar Munagala said in an interview with TechCrunch that AI-driven edge computing will be a future trend because it also has advantages in data privacy. While Blaize remains a small player in the massive AI chip market, with the company losing $87.5 million on revenue of just $3.8 million in 2023, Munagala noted that chipmakers require significant capital investments to build production capabilities to achieve scale in the future.

Currently, Blaize also has $400 million in potential deals, including a purchase order with an undisclosed Middle Eastern defense agency worth up to $104 million to develop a system that can identify friendly and enemy forces. Systems for detecting small vessels and detecting drones. Munagala predicts that Blaize will be worth $1.2 billion after the SPAC merger, although that is still insufficient compared with the private valuations of some other companies such as Cerebras.

Unlike Blaize, Cerebras focuses on data center chips and is currently preparing for an IPO but has not yet gone public. Munagala believes that the listing of Blaize is an investment in the future transformation of AI chips from centralized data centers to wider physical product integration.

“All the hype about AI is focused on the data center, and in reality, many use cases that are closely related to the real world are being ignored,” Munagala said. He stressed that Blaize will focus on the importance of practical applications of AI in real life.

Official entrance: https://www.blaize.com/