Positron raises $875M at $5B valuation as its co-founder calls anti-data-center talk a "Chinese psyop"
20VC · rss · 2026-09-19
20VC interviews Positron AI co-founder Thomas Sohmers, whose inference-chip startup just raised an $875M Series C at a $5B valuation (Atreides, NEA, Valor, Jim Clark). Key topics: why inference needs different hardware, KV caching and memory compression economics, how many planned data centers will actually get built, energy as AI's biggest bottleneck, his claim that "anti-data-centres is a Chinese psyop," China chip export restrictions, DeepSeek's software-driven cost cuts, token prices by 2028, whether open models threaten OpenAI and Anthropic, and if Mercor and Surge could become $200B companies.
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