Extropic signs a $75 million Commerce Department LOI to scale thermodynamic AI chips

beffjezos · x · 2026-07-29

Extropic says it has signed a letter of intent with the U.S. Department of Commerce for up to $75 million in CHIPS R&D funding.

• The money is intended to scale the company’s thermodynamic sampling units (TSUs) for AI workloads.
• Extropic describes TSUs as a new semiconductor category that uses thermodynamic fluctuations in CMOS transistors to sample probability distributions.
• The company says the chips could improve energy efficiency by orders of magnitude on some generative-AI workloads.
• The announcement also emphasizes domestic manufacturing and an American foundry path.

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