Phononic, a Durham, NC semiconductor startup that makes solid-state thermoelectric cooling chips for GPUs and networking hardware, is exploring a sale at a valuation around $1.5B with some bids exceeding $2B—more than triple its last known $630M valuation from 2022. The company is working with investment bank Lazard and has not named specific buyers. Phononic's technology claims a 40% improvement in sustained GPU compute performance under thermal load and has been deployed across all major hyperscalers, making it an acquisition target as AI data center operators struggle to manage heat density.