Extropic Signs $75 Million Commerce Letter for Thermodynamic AI Chips

Jul 31, 2026
Extropic has signed a letter of intent with the U.S. Department of Commerce for up to $75 million in planned CHIPS research funding to develop Thermodynamic Sampling Units and qualify a domestic manufacturing path.

Extropic has signed a letter of intent with the U.S. Department of Commerce for up to $75 million in planned funding through the CHIPS Research and Development Office, the company announced in a press release.

The funding is planned to support development of Thermodynamic Sampling Units, or TSUs, and qualify a domestic manufacturing path for the chips. Extropic describes TSUs as semiconductors built for probabilistic AI workloads.

The company said TSUs use thermodynamic fluctuations in standard CMOS transistors to sample from programmable probability distributions. Extropic says this approach can support generative AI, simulations, physical intelligence, defense systems, robots, autonomous systems, and sensor platforms.

Extropic also said TSUs can deliver energy efficiency gains of orders of magnitude over conventional GPUs on key generative AI workloads. The company said the chips can be made on mature semiconductor nodes in American fabs.

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