[AI Inference Startup General Compute Secures $400 Million Loan, Marking the First Financing Deal Using Inference-Specific Chips as Collateral] BlockBeats reports that on July 17, AI inference-focused startup General Compute recently secured a $400 million loan from Upper90, marking the first financing deal using inference-specific chips as collateral. The company utilizes SambaNova ASIC chips to build a dedicated cloud platform. In May, General Compute completed a $15 million seed round of funding, positioning itself to handle AI workloads with faster token processing speeds and lower latency compared to traditional GPU clouds, deployed in existing data centers, including crypto mining facilities.