Meta Bought Rivos to Accelerate Its AI Chip Push. It Isn’t Working.

Meta Platforms bought semiconductor startup Rivos last year to accelerate development of in-house chips and reduce its reliance on Nvidia as it pours cash into data centers for its AI ambitions.

Now six months since the acquisition closed, Meta is struggling to make it work, beset by problems that illustrate the social media giant’s bigger challenges in actually building a chip business, according to 11 current and former employees who have worked on the chip efforts. They described months of uncertainty over strategy, shifting leadership priorities for the chips division that have hindered Meta’s ability to use Rivos’s technology, and tensions between Rivos staffers and Meta’s existing chips team over strategy and other issues.