Eridu emerges from stealth with $200M Series A

Eridu, an AI networking startup led by co-founder and CEO Drew Perkins, has emerged from stealth with an oversubscribed $200 million Series A round. The financing was led by Socratic Partners, John Doerr, Matter Venture Partners and others, bringing Eridu’s total raised to $230 million.

Perkins has been working on computer network technology since the 1980s, helping create the Point-to-Point Protocol and founding companies including Lightera Networks, Infinera, Gainspeed and Mojo Vision. A conversation with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman after the release of ChatGPT convinced him the next bottleneck would be how chips communicate, not just access to more chips.

Perkins and co-founder Omar Hassen, who has experience designing networking chips for Broadcom and Marvell, founded Eridu in 2024 to rethink networking from the silicon up.

eridu, drew perkins, omar hassen, series a, $200m, socratic partners, john doerr, ai networking, networking chips, openai