Amp Raises $1.3 Billion to Build Global AI Chip Pool
Updated
Updated · The New York Times · May 12
Amp Raises $1.3 Billion to Build Global AI Chip Pool
2 articles · Updated · The New York Times · May 12
More than $1.3 billion will fund Menlo Park-based Amp’s plan to buy AI computing capacity from data-center operators and share it with startups, universities and other groups shut out of scarce chips.
Amp is pitching the model as an AI “grid”: investors supply capital, members gain access to compute, and some can contribute cash, training data, models or joint development work in return.
Periodic Labs and Eleven Labs have agreed to participate, with backers including Andreessen Horowitz, Y Combinator and cloud providers helping Amp aggregate demand and negotiate better terms.
The effort targets a market dominated by Amazon, Google, OpenAI and Anthropic, and echoes broader pooling moves such as Nvidia and Mistral’s push to share AI infrastructure in Europe.
With surging energy use and public resistance, can pooling underutilized compute solve both the AI shortage and the environmental backlash?
Could Amp’s global AI compute grid truly break tech giants’ monopoly, or will it create new forms of digital dependency and sovereignty risks?