Cognichip, a San Francisco-based AI startup, has emerged from stealth mode with $33 million in seed funding to revolutionize how semiconductors are designed and brought to market. The funding round was co-led by Lux Capital and Mayfield, with participation from FPV and Candou Ventures.
The company is developing what it calls Artificial Chip Intelligence (ACI®), the world's first physics-informed foundation model specifically tailored for chip design. According to Cognichip, this technology could reduce chip development time by 50% and slash associated costs by up to 75%, addressing a critical bottleneck in the AI industry where hardware development lags behind software innovation.
Founded by semiconductor industry veteran Faraj Aalaei, who previously led Aquantia and Centillium Communications to successful IPOs, Cognichip brings together AI experts from institutions like Stanford, Google, and MIT. Key team members include Ehsan Kamalinejad as Co-founder and CTO, who previously led AI features at Apple and pioneered reinforcement learning at AWS, and Simon Sabato as Co-founder and Chief Architect, formerly a lead architect at Google, Cisco, and Cadence.
"Our vision is to fundamentally reshape the economics of semiconductor design," said Aalaei, who noted that traditional chip development can take 3-5 years and cost over $100 million before reaching production. The semiconductor industry faces additional challenges with a projected shortage of one million skilled workers by 2030, threatening to constrain the industry's growth potential.
Beyond efficiency gains, Cognichip aims to democratize access to chip design, potentially enabling smaller companies and startups to develop specialized processors that would otherwise be prohibitively expensive. This could spur innovation in a field where venture capital investment has declined dramatically since its peak in 2000.
While the company acknowledges it will take several years to build the model to "ultimate performance," Aalaei believes Cognichip's technology will be able to assist companies before reaching that goal. "When we get to that point, this artificial chip intelligence will be building a system that can actually act like an expert engineer," he said. "Once we achieve that vision, you can get the same work done with a fraction of the people and in much, much shorter time."