Auradine raises $153M to develop bitcoin mining and AI networking hardware

Data center hardware startup Auradine Inc. today disclosed that it has raised $153 million in a Series C funding round.

The investment was led by StepStone Group with participation from Samsung Catalyst Fund, Qualcomm Ventures and several other backers. Auradine’s total outside funding now stands at over $300 million. It disclosed on the occasion that its hardware is now used in the data centers of more than 40 bitcoin mining companies.

“Both bitcoin and AI convert energy into economic value and require highly energy-efficient, scalable and flexible infrastructure solutions,” said co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Rajiv Khemani.

Santa Clara, California-based Auradine sells servers optimized for bitcoin mining. Bitcoin mines mint cryptocurrency by performing a large number of hashing operations, which are computations that turn a piece of data into a different, usually smaller piece of data. Auradine’s servers ship with custom processors specifically geared to hashing.

The company’s hardware lineup includes several different types of servers. Some use traditional fans to dissipate the heat they generate during bitcoin mining. Others feature immersion cooling technology, which works by placing a server’s components in nonconductive liquids that carry heat away.

Last month, Auradine expanded its hardware lineup with a system called the AH3880. It uses water cooling, which is significantly more efficient than both immersion cooling and fans. The water doesn’t contact the server’s electronic components, but rather cools so-called cold plates that in turn dissipate heat from the motherboard.

The AH3880 ships with a custom chip made using a three-nanometer manufacturing process. According to Auradine, it can manage up to 600 trillion hashing operations per second. The onboard firmware detects when the AH3880 is about to overheat and dials down its performance to lower operating temperatures.

Another software feature, EnergyTune, helps decrease the impact of bitcoin mines on the electricity grids to which they’re connected. The technology can automatically lower the AH3880’s power usage at times when a utility experiences elevated demand from other customers. Once electricity consumption returns to usual levels, EnergyTune boosts hashing speeds. Auradine says the technology avoids the frequent reboots required by competing software.

The company’s other major focus area is the data center networking market. Against the backdrop of today’s funding milestone, it launched a new business unit called AuraLinks AI to lead its efforts in this segment. The unit includes former staffers from Cisco Systems Inc., Juniper Networks Inc. and Broadcom Inc., a major supplier of networking chips.

Auradine is developing network hardware for linking together graphics cards into computing clusters. According to the company, the equipment runs on a custom chip and will provide up to five times better performance than earlier hardware. Auradine plans to use UAL and Ultra Ethernet Link, two open-source networking standards optimized for AI clusters.

Image: Unsplash