NextSilicon

Founding: when exactly?

NextSilicon's founders are Elad Raz, Eyal Nagar and Ilan Tayari, as the company's website confirms. Alongside the founding year 2017, the year 2018 also appears in the sources: Calcalist from October 2024 and the company announcement "NextSilicon Unveils Maverick-2" say it was established in 2018. The discrepancy has not been resolved.

A chip structure that changes while running

The technical approach is different from that of the familiar AI accelerators. In a regular processor, the internal structure is fixed from the moment it is manufactured, and the software is adapted to it. NextSilicon reversed the relationship: the chip measures in real time which parts of the code are actually running, and changes the way its internal computing units are connected accordingly. The goal: to run old scientific code, written decades ago, faster without rewriting it.

Maverick-2: out of stealth with $303 million

According to the company's official announcement from 30 October 2024, NextSilicon emerged from stealth with the launch of Maverick-2, which it calls the first "Intelligent Compute Accelerator" (ICA) of its kind, together with the disclosure that it had already raised $303 million from investors such as Amiti, Aleph and Playground Global. Sandia National Laboratories in the United States, a partner of the company for more than four years, had already used Maverick-2 in preparation for its supercomputer called Spectra.

4 times the performance per watt, and who the customers are

According to the same announcement, Maverick-2 delivers up to 4 times the performance per watt compared with regular graphics processors, and more than 20 times compared with high-end central processors, while using 50%–80% less power than previous generations. The company's customers include the U.S. Department of Energy, academic research institutions, and commercial customers in finance, energy, manufacturing and life sciences.

A bet against the current

The company's bet is that flexibility while running will pay off more than rigid specialization. This claim is disputed in the industry, since dedicated accelerators achieve high performance precisely because they give up flexibility. By October 2024 the company had raised $303 million at a valuation of $1.6 billion. As of 2026 it is one of the few Israeli companies trying to compete directly with Nvidia and Intel in the processor core itself.