Meta reportedly buying RISC-V AI GPU firm Rivos (www.tomshardware.com)

Meta is reportedly in talks to acquire stealth RISC-V chip startup Rivos, according to Bloomberg sources. Rivos designs GPUs and AI accelerators around the open RISC-V ISA, offering SoCs and PCIe accelerator IP. The move would bolster Meta’s internal silicon push — including its Broadcom-partnered “Meta Training and Inference Accelerator” (MTIA), which likely uses RISC-V, saw tape-outs in March, and is already in limited deployment alongside Nvidia GPUs in Meta data centers. The deal’s terms are unclear (Rivos has claimed a ~$2B valuation), and the startup has a contested history, having settled a 2022 lawsuit with Apple in 2024. If completed, the acquisition would be a high-profile bet on RISC-V for datacenter-scale AI, signaling a potential shift away from Nvidia-dominated hardware stacks. Technically, Meta would gain accelerator IP and engineering talent capable of producing PCIe-based RISC-V AI chips fabricated at TSMC — potentially accelerating MTIA development or spawning new RISC-V accelerators to augment or replace Nvidia H200s internally. Risks include integration challenges, Rivos’s valuation/negotiation dynamics, and the broader hurdle of bringing RISC-V from MCU/IoT footprints into mainstream U.S. data centers.