By Stephen Nellis

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) -Vertical Semiconductor, a startup spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, on Wednesday said it raised $11 million in funding to commercialize chip technology that can deliver electricity to artificial intelligence servers more efficiently.

Vertical makes chips out of a material called gallium nitride, an alternative to silicon which is becoming central to an effort led by chip designer Nvidia to rework auxiliary chips inside AI data centers to direct electricity and convert it into the form needed by Nvidia’s chips.

Those data centers currently consume as much power as some cities. However, when converting huge voltages from power stations to the tiny voltages needed by microchips, much of that electricity simply generates heat.

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