Ampere Computing

CEO: Renee James

An up-and-coming player in the semiconductor space, Ampere Computing is taking on Intel and AMD in the data center with Arm-based CPUs it says can outperform competing processors. The Santa Clara, Calif.-based startup recently disclosed it has landed Tencent, Bytedance, Equinix, CloudFlare and uCLoud as customers in addition to previously disclosed engagements with Microsoft and Oracle. At the same time, the chipmaker is expanding its OEM coverage beyond Gigabyte and Wiwynn to Foxconn and Inspur Group. The company is also starting to design its own custom cores for processors, going beyond its original strategy of using core designs from Arm for its 80-core Altra and 128-core Altra Max CPUs. The company’s CPUs are now publicly available in public instances provided by Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.