Highlights:

  • Recently, Auradine expanded its hardware offerings with the introduction of the AH3880 system.
  • The company is expanding its focus to the data center networking sector. To drive these efforts, Auradine has launched a new business unit, AuraLinks AI.

Auradine raised USD 153 million in a Series C funding round. The company is a data center hardware startup.

The round was led by StepStone Group, with additional backing from Samsung Catalyst Fund, Qualcomm Ventures, and several other investors. With this latest investment, Auradine’s total external funding has surpassed USD 300 million. The company also revealed that its hardware is now deployed in the data centers of over 40 bitcoin mining firms.

“Both bitcoin and AI convert energy into economic value and require highly energy-efficient, scalable and flexible infrastructure solutions,” said Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Rajiv Khemani.

Auradine, based in Santa Clara, California, manufactures servers designed specifically for bitcoin mining. Bitcoin mining operations generate cryptocurrency by performing numerous hashing tasks—computations that transform a piece of data into another, typically smaller, piece of data. Auradine’s servers are equipped with custom processors optimized for these hashing processes.

The company offers a range of server models. Some utilize traditional fans to manage the heat generated during bitcoin mining, while others incorporate immersion cooling technology, which submerges the server’s components in non-conductive liquids to efficiently transfer heat away.

Recently, Auradine expanded its hardware offerings with the introduction of the AH3880 system. This model employs water cooling, which is far more efficient than both immersion cooling and traditional fans. The water doesn’t directly contact the server’s electronic components; instead, it cools special cold plates, which in turn dissipate heat from the motherboard.

The AH3880 comes equipped with a custom chip built using a three-nanometer manufacturing process. Auradine claims it can handle up to 600 trillion hashing operations per second. The device’s firmware is designed to detect when the AH3880 is at risk of overheating, automatically reducing its performance to maintain lower operating temperatures.

Another key software feature, EnergyTune, helps minimize the impact of bitcoin mining on local electricity grids. This technology automatically reduces the AH3880’s power consumption during peak demand periods, when utility grids face high load from other customers. Once the demand levels return to normal, EnergyTune increases hashing speeds. Auradine asserts that this feature prevents the frequent reboots required by competing software.

Additionally, the company is expanding its focus to the data center networking sector. To drive these efforts, Auradine has launched a new business unit, AuraLinks AI. This division is led by former employees from Cisco Systems Inc., Juniper Networks Inc., and Broadcom Inc., a leading supplier of networking chips.

Auradine is working on network hardware designed to connect graphics cards into computing clusters. The company claims the equipment, powered by a custom chip, will deliver up to five times the performance of previous hardware. Auradine intends to utilize UAL and Ultra Ethernet Link, two open-source networking standards optimized for AI clusters.