About Rain AI
Rain AI, a US startup, set out to build AI chips that perform calculations inside memory and are loosely brain-inspired, aiming to cut the energy spent moving data. OpenAI signed a nonbinding letter of intent in 2019 to buy 51 million dollars of its chips, but reporting indicates that purchase never went ahead. The company's planned 150 million dollar Series B round collapsed, and reports say it laid off nearly all staff in June 2025. OpenAI later acquired a number of its patents, with the price undisclosed. The company appears to be effectively defunct.
Rain AI was founded in 2017 and is based in Redwood City, CA, United States. It is listed under Neuromorphic Computing, In-Memory Computing. Reported funding is $76M raised (Series B collapsed).
Compute Technologies
- Neuromorphic
- In-Memory Computing
What Rain AI works on
Neuromorphic Computing
Neuromorphic computing builds chips that copy some features of the brain. Instead of a central processor and separate memory, a neuromorphic chip has many small units that act like neurons, each with its own local memory, joined by connections that act like synapses.
In-Memory Computing
In-memory computing does calculations inside or right next to the memory that stores the data, instead of copying the data to a separate processor. It is also called processing-in-memory (PIM) or compute-in-memory.
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