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Why the first GPU financiers are turning to inference chips in a $400 million deal

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General Compute, an AI inference cloud startup, has landed a $400 million loan from Upper90, a tech investment firm. It might be the first deal to put up inference-specific chips as collateral — chips built to run already-trained AI models quickly and efficiently, rather than the more expensive chips used to build the models in the first place.

The financing is the latest signal that markets are responding to concerns over the price of AI tools and tokens by turning to infrastructure that runs open-source models more cheaply than the newest LLMs from frontier labs.

Founded by CEO Finn Puklowski, General Compute raised a $15 million seed round in May to build an inference neocloud around silicon from SambaNova, an Intel-backed chipmaker. (Neoclouds are purpose-built for AI workloads, unlike the general-purpose infrastructure offered by traditional hyperscalers like AWS or Azure.)

The company’s SN50 chips are designed for inference. They’re power-efficient and don’t require expensive water-cooling systems, which means they can be deployed more quickly than GPUs across a larger variety of data centers. General Compute says the new chips will provide 16 times faster inference than GPU-based clouds.

The challenge is getting a lot of these chips, especially when you’re a brand-new company.

Upper90 co-founder and CEO Billy Libby, a former Goldman Sachs quantitative trader, had a playbook for this: In 2021, his firm financed GPU purchases by Crusoe, the energy-focused data center startup, which he believes was the first loan against the value of advanced chips.

Traditional lenders eschewed such deals at the time because of the risks and uncertainties around GPU depreciation. But as CoreWeave made chips-backed loans into a business model and then the basis of a blockbuster IPO, this kind of financing has become common.

“When we financed Nvidia GPUs as the first group to do that, the market was inefficient,” Libby told TechCrunch. “We could really put together something as an early participant, and kind of get compensated for the risk.”

Now that GPUs are comparatively well understood and perhaps over-bought, Upper90 is turning to companies like General Compute to ride the next wave of the AI boom. “We think open source models are going to be important, and we went and looked for a player last year that was in inference,” Libby said. “Everyone doesn’t need a supercomputer, but they do need inference and AI.”

That thesis has been growing stronger, with companies that provide access to open models, like OpenRouter and Fireworks, raising new rounds at huge valuations. New models like Kimi’s K3, recently just this week, have proven to compete with the latest releases from Anthropic and OpenAI on coding benchmarks. And new chipmakers like Groq and Cerebras have drawn interest from acquirers and public markets alike.

General Compute’s ability to access chips outside of Nvidia’s ecosystem matters for the same reason. TensorWave, another AI infrastructure company, is making a similar bet on a partnership with AMD. As more alternatives to Nvidia emerge, compute providers that aren’t locked into Nvidia deals may have an advantage in providing cost-efficient inference.

“There are a bunch of chips that are starting to scale that have amazing [total cost of ownership], or that can operate much faster than Nvidia, but there’s not too many buyers for them,” Puklowski said. “By getting together with Upper90, this is not just, ‘a cool startup got some money to buy some compute.’ Like, this is the first signal of capital organizing itself and the fragmenting of Nvidia’s monopolistic dominance.”

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“Herdsmen sent a threat letter to me” – Reverend Dachomo alleges

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Reverend Ezekiel Dachomo, Regional Chairman of the Church of Christ in Nations (COCIN) in Barkin Ladi Local Government Area in Plateau State has said he has received a threatening letter from suspected Fulani herdsmen vowing to attack and kill him along with members of his household.

Dachomo made the disclosure in a video shared on his X account, following fresh attacks on communities in the state by suspected armed herdsmen.

He claimed the letter, written in both Hausa and English, was sent by the herdsmen and that copies have been distributed to heads of various security agencies in the state.

In the video, the cleric quoted the letter’s senders as saying they would kill him and nine members of his household, just as they allegedly killed nine of his relatives.

Reverend Ezekiel Dachomo
Reverend Ezekiel Dachomo

“A few days ago, Fulani herdsmen sent a threatening letter to me and to members of my church. The letter was written in both Hausa and English, and its message was terrifying.

“They vowed to attack me and kill me soon, just as they killed nine of my relatives. Copies of these threatening letters have already been handed over to the security operatives,” Dachomo said.

Despite the threats, Dachomo said he remains unafraid, placing his life in God’s hands.

“Many people have asked me if I am afraid. My answer is no. I am not afraid because my life is in the hands of Almighty God,” he stated.

Reverend Ezekiel Dachomo
Rev Dachomo in Plateau community

“The Lord is on my side; I will not fear. What can man do unto me?”

The reverend recounted the profound personal losses he has endured from recent attacks, describing the pain of conducting burials for loved ones and comforting families who lost parents and relatives.

“I know what it means to bury those I love. I know what it means to wipe the tears of children who watched their parents murdered. I know what it means to stand before grieving families whose only crime was refusing to deny Jesus Christ,” he said.

“Now they say I will be next. But I ask the world, what is my crime? Is my crime that I speak for widows who have no voice? Is my crime that I cry for orphaned children whose parents were murdered? Is my crime that I tell the stories of persecuted Christians in Nigeria so the world will not forget them?”

“If that is my crime, then I will continue until my last breath,” Dachomo added.

He emphasized that killing him would not silence the truth. The cleric called on the world to remember the victims and support justice for persecuted Christians.

“Remember the widows. Remember the orphans. Remember the innocent Christians who continue to suffer simply because of their faith. Stand with us in prayer. Stand with us in truth. Stand with us in demanding justice for every innocent life,” he urged.

“If one day my voice is silenced, let the world remember that I never carried a weapon. My only weapon was the truth. My only mission was to defend the persecuted.”

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BREAKING: Court strikes out suit seeking recognition of Turaki-led PDP national leadership

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A Federal High Court in Abuja has struck out a suit seeking to compel the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to recognise and publish the names of the Kabiru Turaki-led Interim National Working Committee of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

Justice Salim Ibrahim, in a judgement delivered on Friday, held that the plaintiffs, led by the Chairman of the PDP Board of Trustees, Senator Adolphus Wabara, lacked the legal standing to institute the suit and consequently struck it out for want of jurisdiction.

The court upheld the preliminary objection filed by INEC and sustained similar objections raised by parties seeking to be joined in the suit, ruling that the plaintiffs failed to establish that INEC had recognised the purported Interim National Working Committee or that they had the authority to sue on behalf of the PDP.

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