Extropic, a pioneer in physics-based computing, this week emerged from stealth mode and announced the release of its Litepaper, which outlines the company’s revolutionary approach to AI acceleration through thermodynamic computing. Founded in 2022 by Guillaume Verdon, Extropic has been developing novel chips and algorithms that leverage the natural properties of out-of-equilibrium thermodynamic systems to perform probabilistic computations for generative AI applications in a highly efficient manner.
The Litepaper delves into Extropic’s groundbreaking computational paradigm, which aims to address the limitations of current digital hardware in handling the complex probability distributions required for generative AI. Today’s algorithms spend around 25% of their time moving numbers around in memory, limiting the speedup achievable by accelerating specific operations. In contrast, Extropic’s chips natively accelerate a broad class of probabilistic algorithms by running them physically as a rapid and energy-efficient, physics-based process in their entirety, unlocking a new regime of AI acceleration well beyond what was previously thought achievable. In coming out of stealth, the company has announced the fabrication of a superconducting prototype processor and developments surrounding room-temperature semiconductor-based devices for the broader market, with the goal of revolutionizing the field of AI acceleration and enabling new possibilities in generative AI.
Extropic’s team brings together experts from the fields of physics and AI, with prior experience at companies such as Google AI, Alphabet X, AWS, Meta, IBM, Nvidia, Xanadu, and leading academic institutions. Led by CEO Guillaume Verdon and CTO Trevor McCourt, this highly interdisciplinary team is uniquely positioned to pioneer the unified approach to physics based AI.
The company also recently closed a $14.1 million Seed funding round led by Kindred Ventures, with participation from notable investors such as Buckley Ventures, HOF Capital, Julian Capital, Marque VC, OSS Capital, Valor Equity Partners, Weekend Fund, and angel investors including Aidan Gomez (Cohere), Amjad Masad (Replit), Arash Ferdowsi (Dropbox), Balaji Srinivasan (Coinbase), Garry Tan (YC), Naval Ravikant, Scott Belsky (Adobe), and Tobias Lutke (Shopify). This funding will accelerate the development of Extropic’s computational paradigm and enable the company to push the boundaries of thermodynamic computing for generative AI.
