YC-backed startup Exa Laboratories is making reconfigurable chips for AI

This news was covered on August 12, 2024 in the daily PRO newsletter.

Exa Laboratories is one of the two startups with ties to Sweden that are known to have made it into Y Combinator's Summer 2024 batch, as covered back in May.

Until now the two founders Elias Almqvist (who is Swedish and based in Gothenburg) and Prithvi Ray remained pretty silent about what they are working on, except that it has to do with "energy efficient programmable chips for AI". But now, their startup received its proper profile page on the Y Combinator website, thereby revealing a few details.

According to it, Exa is making reconfigurable chips for AI "that offer superior speed and energy efficiency compared to traditional GPUs/TPUs/LPUs".

"Our chips automatically adapt themselves to each specific AI model, overcoming the von Neumann bottleneck, (a common limitation in standard systems). By optimizing for each AI architecture, we significantly boost both inference and training speeds while reducing energy consumption", the founders write.

The duo recently moved to San Francisco to attend the YC program.