By Jeffrey Dastin and Krystal Hu

(Reuters) -Meta intends to acquire the chip startup Rivos to bolster its in-house semiconductor efforts, the social media company said on Tuesday.

The Santa Clara, California-based startup, which is backed by Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan, is focused on designing chips based on the RISC-V architecture, an open-source alternative to the architectures made by Arm, Intel and AMD.

Meta declined to disclose the financial terms and Rivos did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Rivos brings expertise in building full‑stack AI systems, Meta’s vice president of engineering Yee Jiun Song said in a LinkedIn post.

Meta aims to expand work on the Meta Training and Inference Accelerator (MTIA), its family of custom‑built in‑house chip accelerators, he said.

The chip startup was near new funding at about a $2 billion valuation, a source told Reuters earlier.

Meta has been one of Rivos’ biggest customers and had been talking to the startup about a deal, a second source familiar with the matter said. The sources declined to be named as they were not authorized to discuss the information.

“Our custom silicon work is progressing quickly and this will further accelerate our efforts,” a Meta spokesperson said when contacted by Reuters.

Reuters exclusively reported in March that Meta was testing its first in-house chip for training AI systems as the company seeks to cut infrastructure costs linked to its spending on advanced AI tools.

The Instagram and Facebook owner has been spending heavily on sought-after AI chips from Nvidia.

Bloomberg News first reported about Meta’s intention to buy Rivos.

(Reporting by Jeffrey Dastin and Krystal Hu in San Francisco and Jaspreet Singh in Bengaluru; Editing by Arun Koyyur and Tasim Zahid)