Big Bets on A.I. Open a New Frontier for Chip Start-Ups, Too

For years, tech industry financiers showed little interest in start-up companies that made computer chips. How on earth could a start-up compete with a goliath like Intel, which made the chips that ran more than 80 percent of the world's personal computers? Even in the areas where Intel didn't dominate, like smartphones and gaming devices, there were companies like Qualcomm and Nvidia that could squash an upstart. But then came the tech industry's latest big thing -- artificial intelligence. A.I., it turned out, works better with new kinds of computer chips.