Cornelis raises $205 million to challenge Nvidia’s AI networking grip

Cornelis raised $205 million and unveiled Active Compute Fabric as it targets GPU networking bottlenecks and Nvidia's infrastructure dominance.

Cornelis has raised $205 million in new funding as the AI networking company expands technology designed to reduce the time GPUs spend waiting for data.

The round was led by IAG Capital Partners and comes as Cornelis introduces Active Compute Fabric, a networking system designed to let chips process and transmit information simultaneously.

The company said the technology targets a major bottleneck in AI infrastructure, where GPUs can spend significant amounts of time idle while waiting for data to move between processors.

Cornelis was spun out of Intel in 2020 and is positioning itself as an alternative to Nvidia in AI networking.

Its architecture is designed to remain open, allowing customers to use different GPUs and accelerator hardware rather than relying on a single vendor stack.

That contrasts with Nvidia, whose GPUs can operate with other networking technologies but are optimized around Nvidia software and infrastructure.

Cornelis has already started shipping its current networking product and is developing a new generation expected to launch later this year.

The funding adds Cornelis to a growing group of AI infrastructure companies trying to reduce Nvidia’s control over different parts of the AI computing stack.

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