Israeli serial chip entrepreneur Avigdor Willenz’s newest startup Factor Labs has raised $50 million at an estimated firm valuation of $500 million, “Globes” has discovered. The sources added that the financing spherical was led by US insurance coverage firm Constancy, which invests in privately-held tech firms, with participation from funding agency Atreides, which has beforehand invested in different firms based by Willenz. That is the primary institutional funding spherical raised by Factor Labs, which is creating AI processors for inference, the stage by which AI fashions are activated after they’ve already been educated.
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Factor Labs places of work are in Tel Aviv’s Azrieli Towers and it has over 100 workers, a lot of them former workers of Habana Labs. Factor Labs executives decline to speak to the media and workers don’t point out on social media websites like LinkedIn that they work for the corporate.
Willenz based and offered Habana Labs to Intel for $2 billion, having beforehand offered Annapurna Labs to Amazon for $380 million and Galileo to Marvell Applied sciences for $2 billion. Two years in the past Willenz instructed “Globes” that he had moved to Switzerland and diminished his actions in Israel in response to the federal government’s judicial reform nevertheless it now appears that with Factor Labs he’s once more concerned in a significant Israeli startup.
Factor Labs declined to reply to this report.
Serial entrepreneur who offered firms for billions
Factor Labs was based by a extremely revered workforce within the funding world: Willenz and the founders of Habana Labs – David Dahan and Ran Halutz. Willenz was additionally a associate within the funding in Havana Labs and the brand new startup introduced in one in every of his former colleagues, Manuel Alba-Marquez, his former associate in Galileo, as an early investor. The affiliation with Willenz and the founders of Habana Labs opens doorways for Factor Labs in each main chip manufacturing unit and each electronics firm. Willenz’s former associate in Israeli investments, Lip-Bu Tan was appointed Intel CEO final month.
That is the corporate’s Sequence A financing spherical, after beforehand elevating capital primarily from its founders, serial entrepreneurs who’ve beforehand offered firms for billions of {dollars}. Factor Labs is already at a sophisticated stage. The funding is meant to carry it to finish the primary sequence of chips and to start manufacturing exams (type-out) at TSMC factories, the everlasting chip manufacturing unit of Wilenz’s startup firms, which has already produced the chips for Annapurna Labs and Habana Labs previously.
Revealed by Globes, Israel enterprise information – en.globes.co.il – on April 14, 2025.
© Copyright of Globes Writer Itonut (1983) Ltd., 2025.
