Illustration: Cath Virginia / The Verge
A startup funded by the cofounder of Yahoo and CTO of Intel is suing Nvidia and Microsoft for allegedly infringing on its patent for a key innovation in AI chips and being part of a buying cartel that allegedly sought to artificially fix lower prices for the technology.
In a new lawsuit, Texas-based Xockets says Nvidia has infringed on its patented data processing unit (DPU) technology, which helps make cloud infrastructure more efficient by accelerating data-intensive workloads. Xockets says the chip giant inherited the infringement through its 2020 acquisition of Mellanox. It claims Mellanox initially infringed on its patent after Xockets publicly demonstrated its DPU tech at a conference in 2015.
Xockets alleges that three of…