A newly founded AI startup is making waves in the tech world with one of the largest seed rounds in recent memory.

According to Bloomberg, Unconventional AI, launched just two months ago by former Databricks AI lead Naveen Rao, secured $475 million in seed funding at a $4.5 billion valuation to develop a new generation of energy-efficient computers designed specifically for artificial intelligence.

The funding round was co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Lightspeed Venture Partners, with participation from Lux Capital, DCVC, Databricks, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, per Bloomberg. Rao also invested $10 million of his own funds on the same terms as other investors. The company is exploring a larger funding goal of up to $1 billion, according to TechCrunch.

Bloomberg notes that Unconventional AI draws inspiration from biology, where living systems must operate within strict energy limits yet achieve high efficiency. Rao highlighted the human brain as an example, noting it can perform complex tasks while consuming only about 20 watts of power — roughly the same as a small light bulb.

According to the outlet, the company is also examining the analog roots of computing instead of relying solely on today’s digital chips and exploring ways to leverage the natural properties of semiconductors to run AI models more efficiently.

“The next several years are going to be about trying out a number of ideas and prototypes and coming up with the exact paradigm of what we believe will scale most efficiently and cost effectively,” Rao said, per Bloomberg.

Rao co-founded Unconventional AI with Michael Carbin, Sara Achour, and MeeLan Lee, all of whom have extensive experience in technology and academia. As the outlet notes, Rao is a serial entrepreneur who previously sold his data and AI analytics startup MosaicML to Databricks in 2023 for $1.3 billion. He also co-founded Nervana Systems, a machine intelligence platform acquired by Intel in 2016 for about $350 million.

With the new funding for Unconventional AI, Bloomberg states that Rao joins other high-profile tech executives whose early-stage AI startups have reached multi-billion-dollar valuations. According to the outlet, these include former OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati, whose company Thinking Machine Labs was last valued at $10 billion; OpenAI Co-Founder and former Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever, whose startup Safe Superintelligence is valued at over $30 billion; and former Salesforce Co-CEO Bret Taylor, whose AI startup Sierra recently hit a $10 billion valuation.