Rain Neuromorphics CEO Gordon Wilson said that while most AI chips on the market today are digital, his company's technology is analogue which can decipher incremental information such as sound waves.

Rain's chip is designed by adding a circuit called a memristor on top of silicon wafers. Memristors, originally designed by HP Labs about a decade ago, serve as 'artificial synapses' that allow for the processing and memory to happen in the same place, making it possible to run AI algorithms much faster and more energy-efficiently than existing digital AI chips.

Wilson said his company started looking at the brain for clues to inform how we can build a new substrate of computation.

"By building neural circuits, we can achieve extraordinary efficiency and extraordinary scale simultaneously."

If Rain takes off it will be a kick in the nadgers for Nvidia which is starting to see competition from other startups including SambaNova Systems, Groq, and Cerebras Systems.