Amp, a Menlo Park-based startup, has raised $1.3 billion to build what founder Anjney Midha calls an "electricity grid" for artificial intelligence computing power. The company aims to create a shared pool of specialized AI chips accessible to startups, universities, and organizations locked out of computing resources dominated by tech giants like Amazon and Google.

Midha, a former partner at Andreessen Horowitz, identified a critical gap: while Anthropic and OpenAI can afford massive data centers, most organizations cannot access the computing power needed to train cutting-edge AI models. Amp purchases excess capacity from data center operators and redistributes it to those who would otherwise be excluded from the AI boom.

The funding attracted Andreessen-Horowitz, Y Combinator, and several cloud providers. AI startups including Periodic Labs and Eleven Labs have already signed on to use and share Amp's computing pool. The venture reflects a broader movement to democratize AI infrastructure—Nvidia and Mistral announced a similar European pooling initiative earlier this year.

The model essentially creates collective bargaining power for computing resources. As Periodic Labs CEO Liam Fedus noted, pooling demand enables far more serious negotiations with data center operators than any single startup could achieve alone.