Eridu, a Saratoga, CA-based developer of high-performance AI networking solutions, has raised over $200 million in a funding round led by ocratic Partners, John Doerr, Hudson River Trading, Capricorn Investment Group, and Matter Venture Partners.
The round also saw participation from Bosch Ventures, Eclipse Capital, MediaTek, TDK Ventures, and others.
Read More:Taya Raises $5M in Seed Funding Round
The company intends to use the funds to complete the development of its high-radix switching platform and accelerate the deployment of networking infrastructure designed for million-GPU scale-out domains.
Eridu has developed a clean-sheet design for the demands of AI. Eridu’s network switch delivers the order-of-magnitude advance in performance, radix, and efficiency needed to meet current and future AI demands.
By moving beyond the limits of current architectures, Eridu provides capabilities that were previously impossible, including:
- Fewer network tiers to lower latency and reduce jitter
- Single-hop scale-up domains supporting thousands of GPUs
- Scale-out domains supporting millions of GPUs
- Up to 40% savings in capital expenditures (CapEx)
- Up to 70% savings in network power
- Faster deployment of AI data centers
“The growing demands of AI require a complete rethink of high-speed interconnect and packet switching,” said Gregory Waters, Managing Partner at Socratic Partners. “Eridu’s new architecture greatly improves throughput and will be essential for next-generation AI. The team’s expertise and proven execution make them well-positioned to deliver the first switching and interconnect platform designed specifically for generative AI.”
“Billions are being wasted on AI data centers due to network limitations,” said Drew Perkins, CEO and founder of Eridu. “Existing vendors are improving too slowly, and even new solutions remain too small in scale. Eridu has tackled and solved the key challenges in silicon, packaging, systems, and optics to break through that wall.”
While AI computing is rapidly improving in performance and scale, networking is falling behind. Data movement demands are skyrocketing as hyperscalers, frontier labs, and neoclouds compete to build larger AI data centers. Meanwhile, new AI architectures and algorithms are increasing the network bottleneck.
Current solutions and the plans from both established and new providers focus on small improvements to the same old architecture. This approach increases latency, power use, cooling needs, inefficiency, and costs. Networking technology has lagged so far that a completely new design is needed.
“AI needs a new generation of infrastructure, and Eridu is leading the way,” said John Doerr, venture capitalist and chairman of Kleiner Perkins. “Eridu’s team of industry veterans has a proven track record, having delivered billions in networking innovation at previous companies like Lightera and Infinera.”
“We’re excited to partner with Eridu as it works to advance AI networking using TSMC’s leading process and system integration technologies,” said Dr. Lucas Tsai, VP of Business Management at TSMC North America. “This collaboration shows TSMC’s commitment to supporting startups like Eridu, combining our semiconductor expertise with their system architecture innovation to drive breakthroughs in high-performance AI data center networking.”
“Today’s cloud networking equipment can’t meet the bandwidth needs of accelerated computing,” said Dylan Patel, founder and CEO of SemiAnalysis. “As larger MoE models and trends like disaggregated prefill and decode emerge, network demands keep growing. Eridu’s technology is built for massive AI scale, supporting both scale-up and scale-out, enabling more bandwidth, larger AI clusters and lower costs. They are the first team I’ve seen with the vision and expertise to deliver the next level of interconnect needed for accelerated computing.”
“Our success comes from backing teams with bold visions to challenge the status quo,” said Dipender Saluja, Managing Partner of Capricorn Investment Group’s Technology Impact Fund. “Eridu has impressed us not only with a standout vision for AI networking, but also with their ability to solve the tough technical challenges needed to make it a reality.”
About Eridu
Founded in 2024, Eridu is pioneering AI networking with a ground-up solution designed to provide the bandwidth, performance, and reliability AI data centers require at scale. While built for the massive needs of hyperscalers, Eridu’s technology can also serve neoclouds, sovereign clouds, and large enterprise AI data centers. Founded by an experienced team of technology and business leaders, Eridu is challenging existing market players and current AI networking solutions.
Read More:momoGood Receives Investment From Edison Partners and Vocap Partners
