Sectors
Foley & Lardner LLP represented NEA as a lead investor in the $875 million funding round for Positron, the AI inference hardware company built to make serving AI models dramatically cheaper and more energy efficient. NEA was joined by co-lead investors Atreides Management, Valor Equity Partners, Andra Capital, Dylan Patel’s SemiAnalysis Capital and Jim Clark, the founder of Silicon Graphics and Netscape.
Positron AI builds hardware and software to make AI inference dramatically cheaper and more energy efficient. The company’s shipping product, Atlas, is deployed at hyperscaler scale today, and its next-generation custom silicon, Asimov, tapes out in late 2026 with production in the second half of 2027. Asimov powers Titan, a multi-terabyte-memory inference system for long-context and next-generation AI workloads. Positron’s energy-efficient architecture allows its systems to be deployed in air-cooled or liquid-cooled data centers at varying rack densities, without dependence on constrained HBM or CoWoS supply chains.
NEA is a global venture capital firm focused on helping entrepreneurs build transformational businesses across multiple stages, sectors, and geographies. NEA invests in technology and health care companies at all stages in a company’s lifecycle, from seed stage through IPO. The firm’s long track record of investing includes more than 270 portfolio company IPOs and more than 450 mergers and acquisitions.
The Foley deal was led by partners Natasha Allen and Louis Lehot and included associates Saige Gallop, Sarina Rogers, and Sarah Waste.
