River AI raises $1.1B from Nvidia and AMD for custom enterprise models

River AI secured $1.1 billion in a combined seed and Series A funding round. General Catalyst and AMP PBC co-led the investment. The venture arms of NVIDIA and AMD provided significant strategic capital alongside Y Combinator and Temasek.

Former xAI co-founder Igor Babuschkin incorporated the startup only a few months ago. Babuschkin previously held engineering roles at Google DeepMind and OpenAI.

The platform enables enterprises to train and own custom AI models rather than relying on generalized models from major labs. The technology is designed to make complex reinforcement learning faster and more cost-effective. River AI’s long-term vision includes developing hardware to create a fully integrated stack for personal AI.