Semiconductor startup Positron has secured $230 million in Series B funding, TechCrunch has exclusively learned. The Reno-based company plans to use the capital to accelerate the deployment of its high-speed memory chips—critical components for AI hardware—sources familiar with the matter said. The round was led by Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar, which has been actively investing in AI infrastructure. This move aligns with Qatar’s broader strategy to build sovereign AI capabilities and position itself as a key player in the global AI landscape. The country’s focus on compute capacity as a strategic economic asset was reinforced at this week’s Web Summit Qatar in Doha, where officials reiterated the nation’s ambition to become a leading AI services hub in the Middle East. Qatar’s commitment to AI infrastructure is already evident through a $20 billion joint venture with Brookfield Asset Management, announced in September, aimed at developing large-scale AI data centers and computing infrastructure. Positron’s Series B brings its total funding to just over $300 million since its founding three years ago. Previous investors include Valor Equity Partners, Atreides Management, DFJ Growth, Flume Ventures, and Resilience Reserve. The company’s first-generation chip, Atlas, manufactured in Arizona, claims to deliver performance comparable to Nvidia’s H100 GPUs while consuming less than a third of the power. Unlike many AI chip startups focused on training large language models, Positron is concentrating on inference—the real-world execution of AI models—reflecting a growing industry shift as businesses prioritize scalable deployment over model development. Sources say Positron’s chips also excel in high-frequency computing and video-processing workloads, making them well-suited for applications in autonomous systems, real-time analytics, and media processing. The investment comes amid increasing pressure on hyperscalers and AI firms to diversify away from Nvidia, despite the company’s dominant position. OpenAI, one of Nvidia’s most significant customers, has reportedly been exploring alternatives due to dissatisfaction with certain aspects of Nvidia’s latest hardware, with efforts to build out internal and external chip solutions ongoing. Positron’s progress underscores a broader trend: the rise of specialized AI hardware designed to meet specific performance, efficiency, and scalability demands. With growing demand for inference-capable chips, Positron is positioning itself as a key player in the next phase of the AI hardware revolution. TechCrunch has reached out to Positron for additional details.