**First AI Chip Startup Goes Public Following Blaize's Merger with SPAC**
Edge AI chip startup Blaize has successfully debuted on NASDAQ after merging with the special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) BurTech. While numerous AI chip startups have achieved exits over the past 15 years, Blaize stands out as the first to go public.
Founded in 2011 as ThinCI, Blaize is one of the most established AI chip startups, celebrating its 14th anniversary this year. Typically, semiconductor companies go public around 7-10 years after their inception. For instance, Cerebras, another AI chip startup with substantial GCC investments and a growing customer base, was founded in 2015 and filed its S-1 nine years later, though it has yet to go public. Blaize has raised $335 million in funding, including $106 million in April 2024, coinciding with its merger announcement with BurTech. Post-merger, the company is expected to be valued at approximately $1.2 billion.
However, Blaize’s financials do little to quell industry skepticism regarding the overhype surrounding AI chip startups. The company’s prospectus reveals that it generated only $28,000 in hardware sales revenue during the first three quarters of 2024, with the bulk of its $1.5 million total revenue for that period coming from engineering services, including software licensing. Since the launch of its chip in 2020, which became commercially available in 2022, Blaize has accumulated a total revenue of $909,000, primarily from 11 design wins in the United States. Currently, the company has completed 23 proofs-of-concept for clients across North America, Japan, Korea, the EU, and the GCC.
Blaize's prospectus hints at a promising pipeline, estimated at $458 million. However, its contracts with strategic investors Denso and Mercedes Benz, which have yielded revenues of $25 million and $7 million in engineering fees respectively, will not lead to chip sales until an automotive-grade version of the Blaize chip is ready, projected for delivery no earlier than 2028. Blaize's chip has been designed with ASIL-D compliance in mind, but obtaining certification can be a lengthy process. Mercedes-Benz and its suppliers are currently evaluating Blaize technology for a future L4 driving platform set to launch by the end of the decade.
In September 2023, Blaize signed a multi-year Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with strategic investor Mark AB Capital, a fund linked to the Abu Dhabi Royal Family. This MoU involves Blaize establishing an AI data center and developing various smart city and security applications for the UAE government. Additionally, Blaize and Mark AB Capital are collaborating to create a training center for UAE citizens based on Blaize’s AI Studio, a no-code platform for developing AI applications on hardware, including Blaize chips, with the goal of training 5,000 UAE citizens.
Shahal Khan, representing Mark AB Capital, expressed in September 2023 that this investment and MoU stem from the UAE's ambition to become the world’s first “smart nation.” He noted that the UAE's connectivity makes it an ideal candidate for implementing various edge infrastructure solutions that Blaize has developed.
Khan mentioned potential applications in national security, traffic monitoring, smart buildings, and autonomous vehicles. He emphasized the importance of training a workforce of AI software developers using AI Studio, which could serve not only the UAE but also the GCC and other emerging markets. The companies projected generating $50 million in annual orders from GCC companies through this MoU over several years, although this goal is still in progress. Blaize's prospectus indicates the completion of a drone detection and video surveillance proof-of-concept for a GCC government entity. The company has also received a purchase order from a UAE defense supplier worth “up to $105 million,” pending an updated proof-of-concept due by April 2025.
While Blaize’s 16 TOPS chip is currently not subject to U.S. export restrictions, these regulations can change rapidly.
Blaize’s first-generation graph streaming processor (GSP) chip was launched in 2020 and, assuming a two-year design cycle, is now seven years old. Although the computer vision applications Blaize specializes in were relatively established in 2018, the absence of a second-generation chip in that time frame is unusual.
Roberto Mijat, VP of marketing at Blaize, stated that the company is developing a second-generation chip, but emphasized that the first-generation GSP can effectively handle smaller multi-modal networks, such as vision-language models. He highlighted Blaize's focus on programmability, stating, “Our emphasis and investment have been on software and tools to facilitate optimal deployment on the hardware… customers can deploy it for a long time because the focus is on software upgrades.”
At the AI Hardware Summit in September, Blaize showcased generative AI inference running on a single Blaize chip, demonstrating its ability to process 1,000 video streams concurrently—ideal for