FPGA server as a sustainable alternative for AI inference

23.5 million US dollars in startup funding FPGA server as a sustainable alternative for AI inference

2025-02-12 From Sebastian Gerstl | Translated by AI 1 min Reading Time

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US startup Positron has received 23.5 million US dollars from investors, including Sun co-founder Scott McNealy, to expand production of its FPGA-based servers for AI inference. The company is focusing on an energy-efficient and cost-effective alternative to Nvidia GPUs and promises a supply chain manufactured entirely in the USA.

With the promise of up to 70% better performance and 66% lower power consumption in artificial intelligence inference, the startup Positron wants to make the artificial intelligence market more sustainable with its FPGA-based hardware.(Image: Positron.ai) — With the promise of up to 70% better performance and 66% lower power consumption in artificial intelligence inference, the startup Positron wants to make the artificial intelligence market more sustainable with its FPGA-based hardware.
(Image: Positron.ai)

Positron's Atlas servers leverage Altera Agilex 7 FPGAs, optimized for Transformer models. Compared to Nvidia H100/H200, they deliver 70% faster inference with 66% lower power consumption (2 kW). Their advanced memory architecture achieves over 93% bandwidth utilization—far surpassing GPUs' typical 10-30%

In addition to the current FPGA generation, Positron is planning to introduce a multicore ASIC based on the latest production technology in 2026 in order to further increase performance and efficiency. However, this development step requires further investment.

Focus on US manufacturing and strategic independence

Positron promises a completely US-based supply chain for its developments. The FPGAs will be produced in Arizona and future ASICs will be manufactured with Intel Foundry Services using 1.8 nm process technology. This is intended to reduce dependence on foreign suppliers and guarantee delivery—a strategically important factor in view of the growing global demand for AI accelerators.

FPGA Conference Europe 2025

The FPGA Conference Europe, July 1 - 3 , 2025 in Munich/Germany, organized by 'ELEKTRONIKPRAXIS' and the FPGA training center PLC2, is Europe's leading specialist conference for programmable logic devices. The conference focusses on user-oriented, practically applicable solutions that developers can quickly integrate into their own everyday work.

More details about FPGA Conference Europe 2025

"Positron proves that powerful AI hardware doesn't have to come from abroad," says Scott McNealy, co-founder of Sun and the driving force behind the investor consortium. The latest financing round is intended to accelerate growth and revolutionize the market for sustainable, high-performance AI inference in data centers—and break free from the dependency on approaches that are currently still primarily GPU-based.(sg)

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Date: 08.12.2025

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