Volta Scores $2.4 Billion Valuation in AI Cloud Funding Push

A new AI cloud company called Volta Infra Holdings Ltd. has secured $2.4 billion in valuation after raising $300 million in venture funding and securing an additional $5 billion worth of financing.

The funding was co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Altimeter Capital, with Nvidia Corp. and Michael Dell also participating.

Volta's goal is to make it easier for top AI labs and smaller startups to pay for Nvidia's cutting-edge chips, which are costly upfront.

Volta has landed a $10 billion contract to provide cloud computing capacity to a leading AI developer, but declined to name the company. The agreement runs for six years.

The startup was founded earlier this year by Ricard Boada and Sofia Gumuzio, two former executives from Brookfield Asset Management Ltd.'s infrastructure business.

As tech companies ratchet up spending on chips and data centers to support AI, more firms have started offering new financing vehicles. Some of these deals create an increasingly interconnected web of dependencies between technology suppliers and AI developers that risks magnifying losses if AI demand fails to live up to the lofty expectations.