Auradine Inc., a startup specializing in data center hardware, has announced the successful completion of its Series C funding round, securing $153 million. The investment was led by StepStone Group, with participation from Samsung Catalyst Fund, Qualcomm Ventures, and several other backers. To date, Auradine's total external funding has surpassed $300 million. The company also revealed that more than 40 bitcoin mining firms are currently utilizing its hardware in their data centers.
"Both bitcoin and AI convert energy into economic value and require highly energy-efficient, scalable, and flexible infrastructure solutions," said Rajiv Khemani, co-founder and CEO of Auradine.
Headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Auradine specializes in selling servers optimized for bitcoin mining. Bitcoin miners generate cryptocurrency by performing massive amounts of hash calculations, which transform a piece of data into another, typically smaller set of data. Auradine's servers are equipped with custom processors specifically designed for these hash computations.
The company's hardware lineup includes various types of servers. Some use traditional fans to dissipate the heat generated during bitcoin mining, while others employ immersion cooling technology, which submerges server components in non-conductive liquid to manage temperatures.
Last month, Auradine expanded its product portfolio with the launch of the AH3880 system, which utilizes water-cooling technology that is more efficient than both immersion cooling and fan-based methods. Instead of directly contacting the server's electronic components, water cools a so-called cold plate, dissipating heat from the motherboard.
The AH3880 features custom chips manufactured using a three-nanometer process. According to Auradine, it can process up to 600 trillion hashes per second. Integrated firmware reduces performance automatically when the system detects that the AH3880 is approaching overheating, helping lower operating temperatures.
An additional software feature called EnergyTune helps reduce the impact of bitcoin mining on connected power grids. This technology automatically lowers the AH3880's power consumption when utility companies experience increased demand from other customers. Once the grid load stabilizes, EnergyTune increases hashing speed. Auradine claims this approach eliminates the frequent restarts required by competing solutions.
Auradine is also focusing heavily on the data center networking market. In conjunction with the latest funding milestone, the company launched a new division named AuraLinks AI to lead its efforts in this space. The division comprises former employees from Cisco Systems, Juniper Networks, and Broadcom, major suppliers of networking chips.
Auradine is developing networking hardware designed to connect GPUs into computing clusters. According to the company, the device runs on custom chips and promises five times the performance of earlier hardware. Auradine plans to leverage UAL and Ultra Ethernet Link, two open-source networking standards optimized for AI clusters.
