SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 19 (Reuters) - Newly formed chip

startup AheadComputing on Wednesday said it had raised $21.5

million in seed funding.

Co-founded by several former Intel central processing unit

(CPU) engineers and executives, the company plans to build

technology and chips based on the open source architecture

called RISC-V, pronounced "risk five."

AheadComputing plans to use the funds to design and develop

CPU technology that aims to solve some of the computing

performance issues that have arisen around artificial

intelligence, such as bandwidth shortages and data processing

limitations.

Co-founder and CEO Debbie Marr said it was an opportune

moment for a startup that relies on RISC-V technology because it

avoids the pitfalls of the x86 architecture used by Intel

and Advanced Micro Devices ( AMD ) and the problems

associated with relying on a single supplier - Arm Holdings

- for the underlying designs.

"The RISC-V ecosystem is open, it's not owned, it's not

controlled by one company," Marr said in an interview with

Reuters. "There are hundreds of players. There is plenty of room

for innovation."

Marr and other senior executives left last year and founded

AheadComputing, which is headquartered in Portland. Marr and

other AheadComputing executives were responsible for developing

several key technologies at Intel that significantly improved

CPU performance.

The seed funding round was led by Eclipse Ventures and

included Maverick Capital, Fundomo and EPIQ Capital Group.

Former Apple ( AAPL ) and Tesla chip architect Jim

Keller invested in the round as well. Keller runs his own RISC-V

venture called Tenstorrent.

Founding the company was attractive because of the growing

demand for high-performance computing, Eclipse partner Greg

Reichow said in an interview. By 2030, it will be roughly $100

billion, he said.

"There's a big market tailwind in this," Reichow said.

(Max A. Cherney in San Francisco; Editing by Kim Coghill)