General Compute Raises $100 Million Series A at $800 Million Valuation to Expand Inference Chip Cloud

General Compute has raised $100 million in Series A funding led by Blackbird Ventures and Abstract Ventures, valuing the inference-focused cloud provider at $800 million post-money, up from $60 million after a May seed round. The startup said a large customer contract worth $100 million in annual recurring revenue paved the way for the raise. The company builds its cloud on specialized inference chips from Nvidia rivals, including a $400 million deal to buy chips from SambaNova — the first debt financing of inference chips — and has added Positron and Cerebras as suppliers. Rather than constructing data centers, it rents space in other companies' facilities and converts former bitcoin-mining sites to run AI models. CEO Finn Puklowski expects General Compute to deploy 75 megawatts of computing capacity in 2027. The funding contrasts with pressure across the neocloud sector. CoreWeave shares have fallen to a 12-month low, and Elon Musk predicted more than 200 neoclouds will face "death and consolidation." Puklowski dismissed those fears as "massively overstated" and said capital raising will remain a full-time job across debt and equity.