General compute secures $100m series a amid neocloud market turmoil

General Compute, a neocloud startup specializing in inference chips, has raised $100 million in Series A funding led by Blackbird Ventures and Abstract Ventures. The company, valued at $800 million post-money, is positioned to capitalize on the growing demand for AI inference capabilities despite the market turmoil affecting CoreWeave and other neoclouds. Finn Puklowski, CEO and co-founder, remains optimistic, dismissing fears of a chip-led collapse as overstated. General Compute has secured key partnerships with SambaNova, Positron, and Cerebras, and has a $100 million annual recurring revenue deal with a major customer. Puklowski expects to deploy 75 megawatts of computing capacity in 2027, with access to 200 megawatts of power. James Palmer of Blackbird Ventures highlighted the company's role in scaling inference chips, citing Baseten's success. Rodrigo Liang of SambaNova emphasized the importance of making AI cloud compute economically viable.