Sept 30 (Reuters) -

Meta intends to acquire the chip startup Rivos to

bolster its in-house semiconductor efforts, the social media

company said on Tuesday.

The Santa Clara, California-based startup, which is backed

by Intel ( INTC ) CEO Lip-Bu Tan, is focused on designing chips

based on the RISC-V architecture, an open-source alternative to

the architectures made by Arm, Intel ( INTC ) and AMD.

Meta declined to disclose the financial terms and Rivos did

not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Rivos brings expertise in building full-stack AI systems,

Meta's vice president of engineering Yee Jiun Song said in a

LinkedIn post.

Meta aims to expand work on the Meta Training and

Inference Accelerator (MTIA), its family of custom-built

in-house chip accelerators, he said.

The chip startup was near new funding at about a $2

billion valuation, a source told Reuters earlier.

Meta has been one of Rivos' biggest customers and had been

talking to the startup about a deal, a second source familiar

with the matter said. The sources declined to be named as they

were not authorized to discuss the information.

"Our custom silicon work is progressing quickly and this

will further accelerate our efforts," a Meta spokesperson said

when contacted by Reuters.

Reuters exclusively reported in March that Meta was testing

its first in-house chip for training AI systems as the company

seeks to cut infrastructure costs linked to its spending on

advanced AI tools.

The Instagram and Facebook owner has been spending heavily

on sought-after AI chips from Nvidia ( NVDA ).

Bloomberg News first reported about Meta's intention to buy

Rivos.