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.
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Aiming for Radical Gains in AI and Quantum Computing
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 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 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.
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Gelsinger: Compute Needs a ‘Sharp Break’ From Today's Power Demands
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."
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Team Includes Veterans From Nvidia, Northrop Grumman, and Google
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. NOC. The team also includes former executives from Nvidia and Alphabet Inc.'s 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.
Snowcap Joins Broader Push to Rethink Post-CMOS Era
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.
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