funding_articleMay 20, 2026Confidence: high
Announcing our Seed Round
$4M seed led by Fifty Years with Liquid2 and YC; AI performance engineers for GPU inference.
Affected score: yesObserved: May 20, 2026Round: SeedAmount: $4M
raisedseed
W
Wafer
SeedFunding signalMarket data is refreshed once per day from public sources. Information may be incomplete or outdated — verify independently before making decisions. This is not investment advice.
Beta
DealFlow OS uses public web data and automated enrichment. Research may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect. Verify important information before making investment or outreach decisions.
Investor read
Evidence-bound summary — expand sections for movement, risks, and signals.
Memo snapshot · May 20, 2026, 6:12 PM
Beta
DealFlow OS uses public web data and automated enrichment. Research may be incomplete, outdated, or incorrect. Verify important information before making investment or outreach decisions.
What they do
Wafer Ship the fastest inference in the world.
Funding
Raised $4M across 1 funding round. Latest: $4M Seed (Jan 2026). Investors: Fifty Years, Liquid2, Y Combinator. (High).
Quick read
- •Wafer Ship the fastest inference in the world.
- •Reported angle: Workspaces: GPU Compute for Your Coding Agent
- •Indexed activity snapshot: 1 funding‑related row(s), 1 hiring‑related, 1 GitHub‑tagged, 21 product/news‑style — scoring reflects corpus coverage only.
Stage
Seed (YC)
Evidence summary
Verified facts
- •Wafer Ship the fastest inference in the world.
- •Reported angle: Workspaces: GPU Compute for Your Coding Agent
- •Indexed activity snapshot: 1 funding‑related row(s), 1 hiring‑related, 1 GitHub‑tagged, 21 product/news‑style — scoring reflects corpus coverage only.
Recent movers
- •May 11, 2026 · Blog / news — Workspaces: GPU Compute for Your Coding Agent
- •May 11, 2026 · Blog / news — Where Did My Microseconds Go?
- •May 11, 2026 · Blog / news — Introducing the Wafer Extension for VS Code and Cursor
+5 more in Recent movement below
- •May 11, 2026 · Blog / news — Workspaces: GPU Compute for Your Coding Agent
- •May 11, 2026 · Blog / news — Where Did My Microseconds Go?
- •May 11, 2026 · Blog / news — Introducing the Wafer Extension for VS Code and Cursor
- •May 11, 2026 · Blog / news — wafer-ai CLI: GPU Superpowers for Your Coding Agent
- •May 11, 2026 · Blog / news — Trace Compare: Compare vLLM traces across platforms
- •May 11, 2026 · Blog / news — The Year of the LLM GPU Kernel Engineer
- •May 11, 2026 · Blog / news — Unlocking AMD MI300X for High-Throughput, Low-Cost LLM Inference
- •May 11, 2026 · Blog / news — Introducing ROCprofiler Compute: AMD GPU Profiling in Your IDE
- •Fifty Years
- •Liquid2
- •Y Combinator
Funding
Raised $4M across 1 funding round. Latest: $4M Seed (Jan 2026). Investors: Fifty Years, Liquid2, Y Combinator. (High).
Hiring
1 hiring‑related row(s); role‑spam risk if mostly generic boards (Low).
GitHub
1 GitHub‑linked row(s) (Low).
Product / news
21 product/news‑styled row(s); headline risk without filings (High).
Traffic / social
No traffic/social evidence indexed (Low).
Funding & hiring signals
ReferenceMay 31, 2025Confidence: high
Space Forge raises $30M Series A to make chip materials in space
Affected score: yesObserved: May 31, 2025Round: Series AAmount: $30M
series araisesraised
Open roles (indexed)
No open roles indexed yet.
Failed or blocked links
- public_page:_pressnot_foundLast checked Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM
HTTP 404
- public_page:_newsnot_foundLast checked Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM
HTTP 404
- public_page:_jobsnot_foundLast checked Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM
HTTP 404
- public_page:_companynot_foundLast checked Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM
HTTP 404
- public_page:_aboutnot_foundLast checked Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM
HTTP 404
DealFlow growth score
63.0Moderate public activity signal
7D+0%
30D+0%
Needs Review
The score is an algorithmic estimate based on observed public company-level signals. It may be incomplete, stale, or inaccurate and is not investment, legal, tax, or business advice.
Source health
- public_market_enrichmentokLast checked Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM
- public_page:_careersokLast checked Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM
- public_page:_blog_workspacesokLast checked Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM
- public_page:_blog_where-did-my-microseconds-gookLast checked Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM
- public_page:_blog_wafer-extensionokLast checked Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM
- public_page:_blog_wafer-cliokLast checked Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM
- public_page:_blog_trace-compareokLast checked Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM
- public_page:_blog_topk-sigmoid-optimizationokLast checked Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM
- public_page:_blog_the-overlooked-gpuokLast checked Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM
- public_page:_blog_seed-roundokLast checked Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM
- public_page:_blog_rocprofiler-computeokLast checked Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM
- public_page:_blog_reward-hacks-field-guideokLast checked Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM
- public_page:_blog_reward-hackingokLast checked Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM
- public_page:_blog_profile-guided-optimizationokLast checked Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM
- public_page:_blog_perfetto-trace-viewerokLast checked Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM
- public_page:_blog_nordlys-case-studyokLast checked Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM
- public_page:_blog_most-hipokLast checked Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM
- public_page:_blog_minimax-m27-passokLast checked Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM
- public_page:_blog_introducing-kernelarenaokLast checked Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM
- public_page:_blog_gpu-docs-webokLast checked Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM
- public_page:_blog_cuda-compilerokLast checked Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM
- public_page:_blog_chip-benchmarkokLast checked Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM
- public_page:_blogokLast checked Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM
- public_page:_okLast checked Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM
- public_page:homeokLast checked Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM
DealFlow score momentum
637D +030D +0
100500
More runs will build history.
The score is an algorithmic estimate based on observed public company-level signals. It may be incomplete, stale, or inaccurate and is not investment, legal, tax, or business advice.
Signal breakdown
Latest momentum signal per category. Expand a card to inspect raw payloads.
Public source summary
- Total evidence rows
- 25
- Latest evidence
- Wed, May 20, 06:12 PM
Source types found
blogcareers_pagecompany_sitefunding_articlegithubpress
Strongest / recent news-style rows
Announcing our Seed Round
Wed, May 20, 06:12 PM · confidence 88%high quality
https://www.wafer.ai/blog/seed-roundWafer | Y Combinator
Wed, May 20, 06:12 PM · confidence 85%high quality
https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/wafer
Public signal timeline
Newest first · 25 event(s)
1
Wed, May 20, 06:12 PM · funding_article · 88% · verified_publichigh quality
Source ↗Announcing our Seed Round
$4M seed led by Fifty Years with Liquid2 and YC; AI performance engineers for GPU inference.
2
Wed, May 20, 06:12 PM · company_site · 85% · verified_publichigh quality
Source ↗Wafer
Ship the fastest inference in the world.
3
Wed, May 20, 06:12 PM · press · 85% · verified_publichigh quality
Source ↗Wafer | Y Combinator
S25; AI that makes AI fast for chip and cloud customers.
4
Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM · github · 72% · verified_publichigh quality
Source ↗wafer · GitHub
Source: GitHub (linked from site)
GitHub presence linked from official site for Wafer.
5
Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM · careers_page · 90% · publichigh quality
Source ↗Wafer - Ship the fastest inference in the world
Source: Careers
Wafer isn't actively filling any positions. If you're exceptional, email emilio@wafer.ai with the most impressive thing you've ever built.
6
Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM · blog · 90% · publichigh quality
Source ↗Workspaces: GPU Compute for Your Coding Agent
Source: Blog / news
Give your AI coding assistant direct access to GPUs. No manual SSH setup, no Docker, or infrastructure management.
7
Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM · blog · 90% · publichigh quality
Source ↗Where Did My Microseconds Go?
Source: Blog / news
We found a benchmark blind spot when using cpp_extension.load() in our own NVFP4 suite on KernelArena. JIT compilation triggers CPU core migration, quietly inflating kernel launch times and deflating benchmark scores. Here's the investigation.
8
Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM · blog · 90% · publichigh quality
Source ↗Introducing the Wafer Extension for VS Code and Cursor
Source: Blog / news
Wafer is the GPU development stack that lives inside your editor: profiling (NCU), compiler explorer, and enhanced GPU docs.
9
Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM · blog · 90% · publichigh quality
Source ↗wafer-ai CLI: GPU Superpowers for Your Coding Agent
Source: Blog / news
Give your AI coding assistant direct access to GPU documentation, trace analysis, and remote kernel evaluation with the wafer-ai CLI.
10
Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM · blog · 90% · publichigh quality
Source ↗Trace Compare: Compare vLLM traces across platforms
Source: Blog / news
Get accurate 1:1 kernel mappings across hardware providers. Compare large vLLM traces in seconds with clean prefill vs. decode separation.
11
Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM · blog · 90% · publichigh quality
Source ↗The Year of the LLM GPU Kernel Engineer
Source: Blog / news
We used an AI agent to optimize AMD's topk_sigmoid kernel, achieving a 9x speedup over PyTorch. Here's exactly how our agent did it
12
Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM · blog · 90% · publichigh quality
Source ↗Unlocking AMD MI300X for High-Throughput, Low-Cost LLM Inference
Source: Blog / news
Large language models are driving a surge in inference workloads. While the AI community often gravitates toward more well-known GPUs, AMD's MI300X quietly stands out. Equipped with 192 GB of HBM3 and memory bandwidth of 5.3 TB/s, we explore how targeted optimization and quantization can unlock its potential.
13
Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM · blog · 90% · publichigh quality
Source ↗Introducing ROCprofiler Compute: AMD GPU Profiling in Your IDE
Source: Blog / news
Profile AMD GPUs directly in VS Code and Cursor. View hardware metrics, roofline analysis, and kernel stats — all without leaving your editor.
14
Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM · blog · 90% · publichigh quality
Source ↗A Field Guide to Reward Hacking in AI Kernel Generation
Source: Blog / news
10 patterns we've tracked where LLMs game GPU kernel benchmarks, manipulating timers, returning garbage, caching results, and more, along with the defenses that catch them.
15
Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM · blog · 90% · publichigh quality
Source ↗Case Study: A 104x (?) Speedup on KernelBench
Source: Blog / news
How a fused kernel claiming 104x speedup passed our correctness checks while reading garbage memory, and the determinism check that catches it.
16
Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM · blog · 90% · publichigh quality
Source ↗Profile-Guided GPU Kernel Optimization
Source: Blog / news
How adding profiling tools to our CLI helped an agent break through a theory-based optimization plateau, achieving 11.65x speedup on the Kimi Delta Attention kernel.
17
Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM · blog · 90% · publichigh quality
Source ↗Introducing Wafer's Built-in Perfetto Trace Viewer
Source: Blog / news
Open Chrome trace JSON files directly in your IDE with full Perfetto functionality — timeline, flamegraphs, SQL, and metrics.
18
Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM · blog · 90% · publichigh quality
Source ↗Nordlys Labs: 8x Faster Routing with Wafer-Guided Kernel Optimization
Source: Blog / news
How a non-kernel-expert achieved 8x speedup on latency-critical CUDA clustering code using profile-guided optimization with Wafer.
19
Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM · blog · 90% · publichigh quality
Source ↗Which models are the most HIP?
Source: Blog / news
LLM-generated kernels are all the rage right now. We used frontier AI models to write HIP kernels for KernelBench and ran them on MI300Xs. Which ones performed the best?
20
Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM · blog · 90% · publichigh quality
Source ↗MiniMax-M2.7 is Live on Wafer Pass
Source: Blog / news
Wafer Pass now serves MiniMax-M2.7 live with a 204,800 token context window, built for long-context coding agents and production engineering workflows.
21
Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM · blog · 90% · publichigh quality
Source ↗Introducing KernelArena
Source: Blog / news
An open platform for benchmarking AI-generated GPU kernels — with initial results from WaferBench NVFP4 on B200 and KernelBench HIP on MI300X.
22
Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM · blog · 90% · publichigh quality
Source ↗GPU Docs: Now Available on the Web
Source: Blog / news
The GPU documentation tool that thousands of engineers loved in our IDE extension is now available as a standalone web app.
23
Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM · blog · 90% · publichigh quality
Source ↗Cloud Compiler Analyzer (PTX/SASS) Inside Your IDE
Source: Blog / news
Cloud CUDA compilation with PTX/SASS output, PyTorch headers, and VS Code integration. No local CUDA install required.
24
Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM · blog · 90% · publichigh quality
Source ↗Introducing Chip Benchmark: Hardware-Centric Performance Insights for AI Workloads
Source: Blog / news
As the AI hardware ecosystem rapidly expands, choosing the right accelerator has become increasingly complex. We're excited to introduce Chip Benchmark, an open-source benchmarking suite purpose-built to evaluate the performance of open-weight LLMs across diverse hardware platforms.
25
Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM · blog · 90% · publichigh quality
Source ↗Wafer - Ship the fastest inference in the world
Source: Blog / news
Autonomous AI agents that profile, diagnose, and optimize GPU inference across your entire stack — from kernels to models to production pipelines.
Official / company site
1 row(s)
company_site·Wed, May 20, 06:12 PM·Confidence 85%high qualityverified_public
Wafer
Ship the fastest inference in the world.
https://www.wafer.ai/News
1 row(s)
press·Wed, May 20, 06:12 PM·Confidence 85%high qualityverified_public
Wafer | Y Combinator
S25; AI that makes AI fast for chip and cloud customers.
https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/waferFunding / news
1 row(s)
funding_article·Wed, May 20, 06:12 PM·Confidence 88%high qualityverified_public
Announcing our Seed Round
$4M seed led by Fifty Years with Liquid2 and YC; AI performance engineers for GPU inference.
https://www.wafer.ai/blog/seed-roundHiring
1 row(s)
careers_page·Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM·Confidence 90%high qualitypublic
Wafer - Ship the fastest inference in the world
Source name: Careers
Wafer isn't actively filling any positions. If you're exceptional, email emilio@wafer.ai with the most impressive thing you've ever built.
https://www.wafer.ai/careersGitHub
1 row(s)
github·Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM·Confidence 72%high qualityverified_public
wafer · GitHub
Source name: GitHub (linked from site)
GitHub presence linked from official site for Wafer.
https://github.com/wafer-aiBlog
20 row(s)
blog·Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM·Confidence 90%high qualitypublic
Workspaces: GPU Compute for Your Coding Agent
Source name: Blog / news
Give your AI coding assistant direct access to GPUs. No manual SSH setup, no Docker, or infrastructure management.
https://www.wafer.ai/blog/workspacesblog·Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM·Confidence 90%high qualitypublic
Where Did My Microseconds Go?
Source name: Blog / news
We found a benchmark blind spot when using cpp_extension.load() in our own NVFP4 suite on KernelArena. JIT compilation triggers CPU core migration, quietly inflating kernel launch times and deflating benchmark scores. Here's the investigation.
https://www.wafer.ai/blog/where-did-my-microseconds-goblog·Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM·Confidence 90%high qualitypublic
Introducing the Wafer Extension for VS Code and Cursor
Source name: Blog / news
Wafer is the GPU development stack that lives inside your editor: profiling (NCU), compiler explorer, and enhanced GPU docs.
https://www.wafer.ai/blog/wafer-extensionblog·Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM·Confidence 90%high qualitypublic
wafer-ai CLI: GPU Superpowers for Your Coding Agent
Source name: Blog / news
Give your AI coding assistant direct access to GPU documentation, trace analysis, and remote kernel evaluation with the wafer-ai CLI.
https://www.wafer.ai/blog/wafer-cliblog·Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM·Confidence 90%high qualitypublic
Trace Compare: Compare vLLM traces across platforms
Source name: Blog / news
Get accurate 1:1 kernel mappings across hardware providers. Compare large vLLM traces in seconds with clean prefill vs. decode separation.
https://www.wafer.ai/blog/trace-compareblog·Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM·Confidence 90%high qualitypublic
The Year of the LLM GPU Kernel Engineer
Source name: Blog / news
We used an AI agent to optimize AMD's topk_sigmoid kernel, achieving a 9x speedup over PyTorch. Here's exactly how our agent did it
https://www.wafer.ai/blog/topk-sigmoid-optimizationblog·Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM·Confidence 90%high qualitypublic
Unlocking AMD MI300X for High-Throughput, Low-Cost LLM Inference
Source name: Blog / news
Large language models are driving a surge in inference workloads. While the AI community often gravitates toward more well-known GPUs, AMD's MI300X quietly stands out. Equipped with 192 GB of HBM3 and memory bandwidth of 5.3 TB/s, we explore how targeted optimization and quantization can unlock its potential.
https://www.wafer.ai/blog/the-overlooked-gpublog·Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM·Confidence 90%high qualitypublic
Introducing ROCprofiler Compute: AMD GPU Profiling in Your IDE
Source name: Blog / news
Profile AMD GPUs directly in VS Code and Cursor. View hardware metrics, roofline analysis, and kernel stats — all without leaving your editor.
https://www.wafer.ai/blog/rocprofiler-computeblog·Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM·Confidence 90%high qualitypublic
A Field Guide to Reward Hacking in AI Kernel Generation
Source name: Blog / news
10 patterns we've tracked where LLMs game GPU kernel benchmarks, manipulating timers, returning garbage, caching results, and more, along with the defenses that catch them.
https://www.wafer.ai/blog/reward-hacks-field-guideblog·Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM·Confidence 90%high qualitypublic
Case Study: A 104x (?) Speedup on KernelBench
Source name: Blog / news
How a fused kernel claiming 104x speedup passed our correctness checks while reading garbage memory, and the determinism check that catches it.
https://www.wafer.ai/blog/reward-hackingblog·Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM·Confidence 90%high qualitypublic
Profile-Guided GPU Kernel Optimization
Source name: Blog / news
How adding profiling tools to our CLI helped an agent break through a theory-based optimization plateau, achieving 11.65x speedup on the Kimi Delta Attention kernel.
https://www.wafer.ai/blog/profile-guided-optimizationblog·Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM·Confidence 90%high qualitypublic
Introducing Wafer's Built-in Perfetto Trace Viewer
Source name: Blog / news
Open Chrome trace JSON files directly in your IDE with full Perfetto functionality — timeline, flamegraphs, SQL, and metrics.
https://www.wafer.ai/blog/perfetto-trace-viewerblog·Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM·Confidence 90%high qualitypublic
Nordlys Labs: 8x Faster Routing with Wafer-Guided Kernel Optimization
Source name: Blog / news
How a non-kernel-expert achieved 8x speedup on latency-critical CUDA clustering code using profile-guided optimization with Wafer.
https://www.wafer.ai/blog/nordlys-case-studyblog·Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM·Confidence 90%high qualitypublic
Which models are the most HIP?
Source name: Blog / news
LLM-generated kernels are all the rage right now. We used frontier AI models to write HIP kernels for KernelBench and ran them on MI300Xs. Which ones performed the best?
https://www.wafer.ai/blog/most-hipblog·Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM·Confidence 90%high qualitypublic
MiniMax-M2.7 is Live on Wafer Pass
Source name: Blog / news
Wafer Pass now serves MiniMax-M2.7 live with a 204,800 token context window, built for long-context coding agents and production engineering workflows.
https://www.wafer.ai/blog/minimax-m27-passblog·Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM·Confidence 90%high qualitypublic
Introducing KernelArena
Source name: Blog / news
An open platform for benchmarking AI-generated GPU kernels — with initial results from WaferBench NVFP4 on B200 and KernelBench HIP on MI300X.
https://www.wafer.ai/blog/introducing-kernelarenablog·Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM·Confidence 90%high qualitypublic
GPU Docs: Now Available on the Web
Source name: Blog / news
The GPU documentation tool that thousands of engineers loved in our IDE extension is now available as a standalone web app.
https://www.wafer.ai/blog/gpu-docs-webblog·Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM·Confidence 90%high qualitypublic
Cloud Compiler Analyzer (PTX/SASS) Inside Your IDE
Source name: Blog / news
Cloud CUDA compilation with PTX/SASS output, PyTorch headers, and VS Code integration. No local CUDA install required.
https://www.wafer.ai/blog/cuda-compilerblog·Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM·Confidence 90%high qualitypublic
Introducing Chip Benchmark: Hardware-Centric Performance Insights for AI Workloads
Source name: Blog / news
As the AI hardware ecosystem rapidly expands, choosing the right accelerator has become increasingly complex. We're excited to introduce Chip Benchmark, an open-source benchmarking suite purpose-built to evaluate the performance of open-weight LLMs across diverse hardware platforms.
https://www.wafer.ai/blog/chip-benchmarkblog·Mon, May 11, 04:38 AM·Confidence 90%high qualitypublic
Wafer - Ship the fastest inference in the world
Source name: Blog / news
Autonomous AI agents that profile, diagnose, and optimize GPU inference across your entire stack — from kernels to models to production pipelines.
https://www.wafer.ai/blogPrivate workspace
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