TPU Trademark Battle Ignites: Tachyum Demands Google Cease Use of “TPU” Label

On December 9, IT Home reported that U.S.-based general-purpose processor design firm Tachyum announced a decisive move on December 8 (local time in Las Vegas, Nevada) to defend its registered “TPU” trademark. The company formally demanded that Google stop using the abbreviation “TPU” within the artificial intelligence sector, marking the official start of a high-profile trademark dispute.

For Tachyum, “TPU” stands for “Tachyum Processing Unit” and represents a licensable Internet of Things and edge AI inference hardware IP. The company first filed its trademark application for “TPU” as early as 2015 and officially secured trademark ownership in October 2020, making it one of the earliest claimants to the term in the computing hardware space.

By contrast, Google’s “TPU” refers to “Tensor Processing Unit.” Its first-generation product entered internal use in 2015 and was publicly unveiled at the Google I/O Developer Conference in 2016. More recently, in November this year, Google submitted a trademark application for “Google TPU,” further intensifying the trademark conflict.

Tachyum argues that both companies operate within the same AI market, making the dual use of “TPU” especially problematic. Radoslav Danilak, Founder and CEO of Tachyum, stated that Google’s continued, unauthorized use of the TPU abbreviation constitutes trademark infringement, creates market confusion, and directly harms Tachyum’s business prospects in the rapidly expanding AI industry.