From Power-Hungry AI to Energy Saver: Snowcap's $23M Move to Revolutionize Computing
Snowcap Compute, a semiconductor startup developing superconducting AI chips, announced a $23 million seed round on Monday. According to Reuters, the company is backed by Playground Global and led by former Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, who will also serve as board chair.
The funding round also included Cambium Capital and Vsquared Ventures.
The startup aims to create high-performance computing platforms that require significantly less power than current-generation chips. Snowcap said its superconducting architecture will deliver 25 times better performance per watt compared to existing AI systems.
Don't Miss:
Peter Thiel turned $1,700 into $5 billion—now accredited investors are eyeing this software company with similar breakout potential. Learn how you can invest with $1,000 at just $0.30/share.
Invest early in CancerVax's breakthrough tech aiming to disrupt a $231B market. Back a bold new approach to cancer treatment with high-growth potential.
Snowcap Compute's superconducting chips are designed to operate with zero electrical resistance and require cryogenic cooling to function, according to Reuters. The company said the chips are being developed to reduce electricity consumption in artificial intelligence computing, a sector facing increasing energy demands.
Nvidia's (NASDAQ:NVDA) upcoming Rubin Ultra server, expected in 2027, is projected to consume around 600 kilowatts of power—about two-thirds of the monthly electricity use of a typical U.S. household, Reuters reported.
Snowcap CEO Michael Lafferty, formerly with Cadence Design Systems (NASDAQ:CDNS), told Reuters that the performance-to-power ratio of Snowcap's architecture justifies the energy spent on cooling. "We're pushing the performance level way up and pulling the power down at the same time," he said.
Snowcap plans to release a basic chip by the end of 2026. Full system deployments will follow at a later stage. The chips will be manufactured in a conventional factory using niobium titanium nitride sourced from Brazil and Canada, Reuters reported.
Trending: GoSun's Breakthrough Rooftop EV Charger Already Has 2,000+ Units Reserved — Become an Investor in This $41.3M Clean Energy Brand Today
Gelsinger, who stepped down as Intel CEO in December, said the industry must rethink its reliance on increasingly power-hungry chips. "A lot of data centers today are just being limited by power availability," he told Reuters.
In a LinkedIn post, Gelsinger described Snowcap as "the first commercially viable superconducting compute platform," and said it delivers performance and efficiency gains across classical, AI, and quantum workloads. He called it his first public investment as general partner at Playground Global and said the company's technology could address compute bottlenecks and "push the boundaries of what is possible with silicon."Snowcap's founding team includes superconducting researchers Anna Herr and Quentin Herr, who previously worked at chip research firm Imed and defense contractor Northrop Grumman Corp. (NYSE:NOC). The team also includes former executives from Nvidia and Alphabet Inc.'s (NASDAQ:GOOG, GOOGL)) Google unit.
According to Snowcap, its architecture is engineered for high-performance AI inference and training, quantum-classical hybrid workloads, and low-latency systems.
Founded in 2024, Snowcap enters a growing field of startups pursuing alternatives to conventional complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor-based processors.
The company said its superconducting logic offers "orders-of-magnitude gains in processing speed and efficiency" and aims to support emerging compute workloads spanning AI, high-performance computing, and quantum workflows.
Read Next: Are you rich? Here's what Americans think you need to be considered wealthy.
UNLOCKED: 5 NEW TRADES EVERY WEEK. Click now to get top trade ideas daily, plus unlimited access to cutting-edge tools and strategies to gain an edge in the markets.
Get the latest stock analysis from Benzinga?
APPLE (AAPL): Free Stock Analysis Report
TESLA (TSLA): Free Stock Analysis Report
This article From Power-Hungry AI to Energy Saver: Snowcap's $23M Move to Revolutionize Computing originally appeared on Benzinga.com
© 2025 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
17 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Canada retaliates against U.S. steel imports after Trump terminates trade talks
President Donald Trump said Friday that he had terminated trade discussions with Canada, citing an incoming Canadian tax on tech companies including those based in the U.S. In a post on Truth Social, Trump referred to Canada as "a very difficult country to trade with" and said that its levy on tech firms — the first payment for which is due Monday — "is a direct and blatant attack on our Country." "Based on this egregious Tax, we are hereby terminating ALL discussions on Trade with Canada, effective immediately," he said. "We will let Canada know the Tariff that they will be paying to do business with the United States of America within the next seven day period." Last week Canada's finance minister said that he would not delay implementation of the digital services tax — which applies to any tech company making more than $15 million from Canadian internet users — even as U.S. trade talks continue. A lobbying group for some tech giants said the tax, which is retroactive to 2022, would cost U.S. companies as much as $3 billion. Those payments are due beginning June 30. The office of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. But late Friday, Canada retaliated against the U.S. by imposing a quota on some steel imports and a 50% surcharge for imports that exceed the quota. Canada's finance minister said the government was acting to protect its industry from "unjust U.S. tariffs." Canada's government said it "remains prepared to take additional steps as needed." Trump's post cuts short what had been a relatively calm period of trade-related announcements — a stretch that had helped markets recover to the all-time highs seen in February. Shortly after Trump's post went live, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq indexes briefly turned negative but rallied later in the afternoon to close at all-time highs. Friday had begun with encouraging comments from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who indicated the president was open to moving the previously announced deadline for trade deals from July 9 to Labor Day — and that country-by-country duties themselves were negotiable. A few hours later, Trump said that initial July 9 deadline was not set in stone, saying the U.S. could either extend or shorten it. Canada is the second-largest U.S. trading partner. Currently, the U.S. has a tariff rate of 25% applied to Canadian imports that don't comply with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, the trade deal Trump inked during his first term before he upended it with a flurry of tariff announcements in his second. The 25% tariff on non-compliant Canadian goods excludes energy products, which are subject to a 10% rate. Canada is also heavily impacted by Trump's 50% tax on steel and aluminum imports — the country is the largest foreign supplier of those materials to the U.S. And it has also been impacted by the 25% duties Trump has imposed on foreign-made vehicles and auto parts. This article was originally published on
Yahoo
21 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Your Daily Work Horoscope for June 28, 2025
Your Daily Work Horoscope for June 28, 2025. Discover your Daily Work Horoscope for each zodiac sign here. You've reached a point where you want to undertake something new. It might be a small project or a big career move. Either way, it's definitely time to get started and forge a new path. Push your ideas up to the front of the pack. You have your finger on the pulse of the masses, and you'll find it simple to devise messages and strategies that appeal to the broadest market. You're more absentminded than usual, and you might accidentally let the wrong information pass into the wrong hands. Be extra careful with important documents and confidential information. Even though you're surrounded by hysteria, you are calm, cool, and collected. Let them freak out and wear themselves down while you charge up and explore new avenues to get the job done. You have plenty going on without any added work, and it might be hard to focus on the business before you. Don't launch any new projects today if you can help it. Attend to your priorities. Discover why 2022 is the year you've been waiting for with your 2022 Premium Horoscope Momentum is on your side. Use it to your advantage. A surge of energy helps you manifest your ambitions more concretely than before. Work toward immediate goals and long-term milestones. You should be able to get a leg up on the competition once you've figured out what's really going on. Things are not what they seem, but just knowing that fact is more than half the battle. As usual, you're the most organized person in the office. Offer assistance if you think it will help. Try to cut other folks some slack as they flail and spin their wheels while you motor forward. You have to focus on the right stuff now. If it feels like you have too much on your plate, clear it off by getting your peers to take over some of the less important tasks. Iit's all about delegation! Your philosophy perfectly matches what's going on in your office and industry. Pursue long-term strategic thinking. Don't hesitate to touch on your mission and vision if you can influence that level. Shared work is easier for everyone. If you all see you're on the same side, productivity can only increase. This is a great time to remind teammates and coworkers of your common goals. The only way to move ahead is by staying put and being patient. Your seeming passivity will sound the alarm in enemy camps and send them running in the wrong direction. It's all about strategy. Find your cosmic purpose. Receive personalized astrological guidance with Astrology+.
Tom's Guide
36 minutes ago
- Tom's Guide
I just played Marvel Rivals on an RTX 5070 Ti gaming laptop — and it reached a shockingly high 320 fps
I recently reviewed the HP Omen Max 16 and Alienware Area-51 Gaming Laptop and was floored by their gaming performance. These machines have Nvidia RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 mobile GPUs (respectively), so I expected astonishing gaming performance. The question I had was, how well would the best gaming laptops with RTX 5070 Ti or lower fare? I recently met with Nvidia and got to check out the new Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 and HP Omen Transcend 14, which pack RTX 5070 Ti and RTX 5070 GPUs (respectively). These are refreshed models of the ROG Zephyrus G14 (2024) and Omen Transcend 14, which are fantastic gaming laptops in their own right. Asus and HP's latest machines offer great performance thanks to their updated components, particularly their RTX 50-series GPUs. Though my time with these laptops was brief, I got a good sense of what their GPUs can dish out. Seeing the incredible frame rates each generated served as further proof that DLSS 4 is the secret weapon for gaming laptops. Editor's note: I got to try these laptops under Nvidia's conditions. We'll have full reviews of these laptops, complete with our usual slew of performance benchmarks, soon. The new Asus Zephyrus G14 (2025) shares the same design as its predecessor but packs the latest components. This includes an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX CPU, and Nvidia RTX 5070 Ti laptop GPU, 32GB of RAM and 1TB of storage. This is an excellent gaming laptop with a design that fits with any environment, be it a gaming den or an office. I got to check out Marvel Rivals on the ROG Zephyrus G14 and FCB: Firebreak on the Omen Transcend 14. Like I said, I didn't go super in-depth with either, but I had enough time to see what DLSS 4 could do for the games' performance. Needless to say, I was astonished. On the RTX 5070 Ti-powered ROG Zephyrus G14, Marvel Rivals ran at around 300 to 320 frames per second with DLSS 4 x4 enabled. Interestingly enough, the frame rate dropped to about 120 fps when I unplugged the machine. Frame rate always suffers when you unplug a gaming laptop, but with DLSS 4 turned on, you won't always have to suffer playing at something like 30 fps. FCB: Firebreak on the Omen Transcend 14 with its RTX 5070 GPU also saw great performance with a smooth 70 fps. Sure, that's nowhere near the lofty 320 fps I saw on Asus' machine, but keep in mind this is a more graphically demanding game running on a system with a less powerful GPU. I don't know about you, but I'm not going to complain that a game is only running at 70 fps. The Omen Transcend 14 is the first RTX 5070 gaming laptop I've checked out, and I have to say it left a good first impression. Granted, that's not difficult since its predecessor is one of my favorite gaming laptops that I would buy with my own money. I'm eager to see how well this machine can handle other graphically demanding games, like Cyberpunk 2077. My colleague Darragh Murphy recently tested Doom: The Dark Ages on the MSI Steam A16 AI+, packing an RTX 5070 Ti GPU and 32GB of RAM. At 1600p resolution and DLSS enabled, he got the game to run at 87 fps, which is already pretty darn good. With DLSS 4 enabled, the fps jumped to an incredible 207. Doom: The Dark Ages is a very well-optimized game, so I'm not surprised to see such incredible performance. But just as I experienced when I tested the game on more powerful gaming laptops, you'll see a huge performance boost when you turn on DLSS 4. The new HP Omen Transcend 14 is a gaming laptop that doesn't look the part. It features a 14-inch 120Hz OLED panel, an Intel Core Ultra 9-285H CPU, 32GB of RAM, 1TB of SSD storage, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 GPU. I've said this before, but if you own a gaming laptop with an RTX 50 series card, there's little reason not to enable DLSS 4. While this frame-generating tech does introduce some latency, you probably won't notice it unless you're a professional gamer. For everyone else who mostly plays single-player titles, DLSS 4 is a fantastic feature that can help lower-end gaming laptops punch well above their weight class. My latest experience with RTX 50-series laptops only reinforces my already positive view of DLSS 4.
