What Esperanto Technologies does

Esperanto Technologies was a privately held semiconductor company founded in 2014 and headquartered in Mountain View, California, that designed and commercialized RISC-V-based massively parallel AI and HPC accelerators. Its core product, the ET-SoC-1 chip fabricated on TSMC 7nm, integrated 1,088 energy-efficient ET-Minion 64-bit in-order cores with vector/tensor extensions alongside four ET-Maxion out-of-order cores running SMP Linux, delivering PetaOps-scale inference performance at sub-30W typical power. The company wrapped the silicon in a four-tier product line: the bare ET-SoC-1 chip, a certified PCIe Gen4 card (co-developed with Penguin Solutions), a 2U AI/HPC compute server with up to 16 cards and 16,000 RISC-V cores, and the Generative AI Appliance bundling hardware with the Primo AI/ML software platform and pre-loaded foundation models including LLaMA 2, Vicuna, StarCoder, Stable Diffusion, and OpenJourney.

Esperanto monetized primarily through one-time hardware sales of these accelerator products, complemented by a paid Esperanto Access Program (EAP) for evaluation, with software (Primo, EtGlowExecutionProvider for ONNXRuntime) sold as part of integrated solutions rather than as standalone licenses. Go-to-market combined direct enterprise field sales with a global channel network - Penguin Solutions worldwide, plus regional value-added partners E4 Computer Engineering (Italy), MEGWARE (Germany), and Elematec (Japan) - targeting data centers, HPC facilities, and enterprise edge customers with a hybrid segmentation across use cases (LLM/Generative AI inference, transformers, computer vision, recommendation systems) and verticals (healthcare/life sciences, robotics, supply chain). Strategic partnerships with NEC Corporation (next-generation HPC RISC-V chips) and Rapidus (2nm foundry) anchored a forward roadmap. The company ceased operations in November 2025, with its intellectual property acquired by Ainekko (Nekko.ai).

Name

Esperanto Technologies

Legal name

Esperanto Technologies Inc.

Website

https://esperanto.ai

Company type

Private

Founded year

2014

Operating status

Closed

Headcount range

51–100 employees

Short description

Esperanto Technologies was a Mountain View-based RISC-V AI/HPC chip company that designed the ET-SoC-1, a TSMC 7nm accelerator with over 1,000 RISC-V cores under 30W, selling accelerator chips, PCIe cards, compute servers, and a Generative AI Appliance to enterprise data centers and HPC customers globally before ceasing operations in November 2025 with its IP acquired by Ainekko.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

AI Accelerator Semiconductors

NAICS

Computer and Peripheral Equipment Manufacturing (33411), Computer Systems Design Services (541512)

SIC

Electronic Computers (3571), Services-Computer Integrated Systems Design (7373)

akta.pro primary industry

Compute & Acceleration ICs (CPU/GPU/AI/FPGA/ASIC) (HDAHABAC)

akta.pro secondary industries

AI/Neural Processing Units (NPUs) & ML Accelerators (HDAHAJAF), Advanced SoCs & Application Processors (HDAHAAAB), AI Hardware IP & Chiplet/Packaging for Accelerators (EDA/IP, advanced packaging) (HDAAAAAL)

Keywords

• RISC-V processors
• AI inference accelerators
• HPC compute servers
• Generative AI appliances
• Energy efficient chips

Headquarters

HQ city

Mountain View

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices5 records

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Hardware or Manufacturing

Cost components

Technology or R&D, Personnel, Supply Chain, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Infrastructure

Revenue model

1. Hardware Sales: Sale of AI/HPC accelerator chips (ET-SoC-1), PCIe cards, compute servers, and Generative AI Appliances. Products available for purchase or secure remote cloud access.
2. Software Licensing: Primo AI/ML software platform sold as part of integrated solutions with hardware, including model development SDK, optimization tools (AWQ quantization, LoRA fine-tuning), and ONNX Runtime integration.
3. Evaluation Program: Paid Esperanto Access Program (EAP) providing evaluation access to ET-SoC-1 through remote and on-premise access. Fees credited against initial product orders.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels5 records

Marketing channels6 records

Core offering

Esperanto Technologies developed and sold RISC-V based massively parallel AI/HPC accelerator hardware and software. The flagship ET-SoC-1 chip integrates 1,088 64-bit RISC-V in-order cores (ET-Minion) with custom vector/tensor units plus 4 out-of-order RISC-V cores (ET-Maxion) on TSMC 7nm, delivered as chips, PCIe Gen4 cards, 2U compute servers, and a Generative AI Appliance. The Primo AI/ML software platform and EtGlowExecutionProvider (ONNXRuntime backend) accompany the hardware for deploying generative AI, transformer, computer vision, and recommendation models.

Product overview

Esperanto Technologies delivered a portfolio of RISC-V-based AI/HPC products centered on the ET-SoC-1 chip — a TSMC 7nm accelerator featuring over 1 thousand RISC-V cores on a single die — and complementary software. The product line comprised four tiers: (1) the ET-SoC-1 chip itself as the foundational AI/HPC accelerator; (2) the ET-SoC-1 PCIe Card form factor (developed with Penguin Solutions) for system integration; (3) the Esperanto AI/HPC Compute Server and Generative AI Appliance, which packaged 4–16 ET-SoC-1 cards into 2U rack-mounted systems with host Xeon processors; and (4) the Primo AI/ML software platform and EtGlowExecutionProvider for ONNXRuntime-based model deployment. The company ceased operations in 2025; its IP was subsequently acquired by Ainekko (also referenced as Nekko.ai), which launched the open-source AI Foundry platform. As of the data cutoff, product availability was listed on esperanto.ai but the company announced it had ceased operations.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• ET-SoC-1: The world's most efficient RISC-V commercial chip with over 1,000 RISC-V processors on a single TSMC 7nm chip.
• ET-Minion
• ET-Maxion
• Primo
• Esperanto Generative AI Appliance

Products and services

• ET-SoC-1 AI/HPC Accelerator Chip TSMC 7nm inference chip with 1,088 ET-Minion 64-bit RISC-V in-order cores (each with custom vector/tensor units) and 4 ET-Maxion out-of-order cores, over 160 million bytes of on-chip SRAM, PCIe Gen4 x8, and sub-30W typical power consumption. Designed for system integrators building AI inference and HPC solutions.
• ET-SoC-1 PCIe Card Low-profile PCIe Gen 4 card with a single ET-SoC-1 chip, 32 GB LPDDR4x DRAM, full monitoring sensors, and management ports. Up to 16 cards per system. Jointly developed and certified with Penguin Solutions for deployment in North America, EU, UK, South Korea, and Japan.
• Esperanto AI/HPC Compute Server 2U 19-inch rack-mounted datacenter server with up to 16 ET-SoC-1 PCIe cards (up to 16,000 RISC-V cores), dual Intel Xeon host processors (16-core 6326 or 32-core 8358P), up to 1 TB DDR4-3200 memory, and Esperanto ML/GPU SDKs. Supports generative AI, transformer, computer vision, and recommendation model inference.
• Esperanto Generative AI Appliance Industry's first RISC-V-based Generative AI Appliance integrating 4 ET-SoC-1 cards with the Primo software stack and foundation models (LLaMA 2, Vicuna, StarCoder, OpenJourney, Stable Diffusion). Full solution for fine-tuning vertical business applications with high data privacy and lower TCO vs. GPU-based systems.
• Primo AI/ML Platform Advanced AI software platform for optimizing generative AI model inference at scale. Includes model optimization, fine-tuning, RAG-based inference, and orchestration across complex model pipelines, plus an AI/ML Model Development SDK with AWQ quantization, LoRA fine-tuning, Flash Attention, and ML compilation tools.
• Esperanto Access Program (EAP) Paid evaluation program for ET-SoC-1 with remote and on-premise access options, enabling evaluation of inference on recommendation, visual analysis, and transformer-based models. Annual subscription with fees credited against initial product orders and higher supply priority for participants.

Quantifiable outcome

• 8.26x speedup compared to CPU execution (Intel Xeon Platinum 8358) for small language model inference
• +2 more outcomes

Named customers1 record

Segments3 records

Ideal customer profiles3 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration18 records

AI capability15 records

Feature5 records

Partnerships

Seven partnerships are on record, tiered core, strategic, regional and minor.

• NEC CorporationcoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 18 November 2024Cooperation with NEC Corporation on roadmap for next-generation chips and software for HPC computing. Leverages NEC's deep experience in HPC supercomputer design and software stacks combined with Esperanto's energy-efficient RISC-V multiprocessor technology to enable next generation supercomputers.
• Rapidus CorporationstrategicStrategic or Co-development Partner · 15 May 2024Partnership with Rapidus to enable more energy-efficient designs for AI inference and HPC workloads for the 'post-GPU era'. Rapidus is developing 2nm semiconductor manufacturing capability in Japan with pilot production line planned for April 2025 and mass production in 2027.
• Penguin SolutionscoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 22 May 2023Strategic partnership with Penguin Solutions (SGH brand, Nasdaq: SGH) to collaboratively develop multiple systems in various form factors for AI and HPC acceleration in datacenter and edge environments. Jointly developed, tested and certified ET-SoC-1 PCIe cards with safety and emissions certifications for North America, EU, UK, South Korea and Japan.
• E4 Computer EngineeringregionalChannel Partner/ Reseller/ Distributor · 22 May 2023Value-added partnership in Italy for developing AI and HPC acceleration systems for sophisticated enterprises, universities and centers for advanced research and computing.
• MEGWARE GmbHregionalChannel Partner/ Reseller/ Distributor · 22 May 2023Value-added partnership in Germany for bringing RISC-V AI and HPC acceleration solutions to research institutes, universities, and industrial and business customers throughout Europe.
• Elematec CorporationregionalChannel Partner/ Reseller/ Distributor · 22 May 2023Value-added partnership in Japan for RISC-V AI acceleration opportunities across digital electronics, automotive industry and industrial and home segments.
• Intel Foundry ServicesminorStrategic or Co-development PartnerEsperanto's massively-parallel AI accelerators added to IFS ecosystem. Combination of Esperanto's low-power design techniques and IFS advanced silicon and packaging technologies enables thousands of RISC-V based processors to operate in a single package.

Scale indicators5 records

Recent moves8 records

Expansion highlights7 records

Direct peers

• Graphcore: Graphcore develops IPU accelerators for AI training and inference, targeting data center and enterprise customers. It is comparable to Esperanto in targeting energy-efficient AI acceleration as an alternative to GPU-based systems.
• SiFive: SiFive is a fabless RISC-V IP and core designer that licenses RISC-V-based CPU IP to chip makers. It overlaps with Esperanto on the RISC-V instruction set, design tooling, and target customer base of custom silicon developers, though it is more focused on IP licensing rather than AI accelerator SoCs.
• Tenstorrent: Tenstorrent designs AI accelerator chips and RISC-V-based processors for data center and edge inference. It directly competes with Esperanto's ET-SoC-1 in the AI accelerator market, with comparable RISC-V DNA and a focus on energy-efficient inference hardware.
• Cerebras Systems: Cerebras builds wafer-scale AI accelerator systems for training and inference in data centers. It competes head-to-head with Esperanto's compute server in the AI accelerator market with a similar focus on enterprise and HPC customers.
• SambaNova Systems: SambaNova develops AI accelerator systems and RDU chips targeting data center inference and training. It is a direct competitor to Esperanto in the energy-efficient AI accelerator category, with a comparable enterprise go-to-market motion.
• Groq: Groq builds LPU inference accelerators optimized for low-latency generative AI serving. It competes with Esperanto in the AI inference accelerator market with a similar value proposition of fast, energy-efficient inference for LLMs.

Emerging players

• Rivos: Rivos is a fabless startup building RISC-V-based server-class processors targeting data center and AI workloads. Like Esperanto, it pursues a RISC-V-based architecture aimed at energy-efficient compute, though it is at an earlier stage of commercialization.
• Ventana Micro Systems: Ventana designs RISC-V-based data center CPUs and accelerator chiplets. It overlaps with Esperanto on the RISC-V compute fabric and enterprise data center target market, focusing on high-performance RISC-V cores for cloud and AI.

Broad incumbents

• NVIDIA: NVIDIA is the dominant GPU and AI accelerator vendor (H100, Blackwell) and the de facto incumbent that Esperanto's energy-efficiency story is positioned against. It defines the performance and software ecosystem benchmark for AI inference.

Others

• Penguin Solutions (SGH): Penguin Solutions (SGH brand) is Esperanto's strategic systems integration partner and a system integrator for HPC and AI workloads. It is comparable as a system-level channel and reference design partner in the same data center AI hardware ecosystem.

Market position

Strengths5 records

Weaknesses5 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks6 records

Key highlights7 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/EsperantoTech
• YouTubeyoutube.com/channel/UCFJM6FyIA9qwhEUg04cgavQ
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/esperanto-ai

Compliance6 records

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles6 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds3 records

Investors7 records

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Esperanto Technologies