Cognichip, a semiconductor AI company developing what it calls Artificial Chip Intelligence, has raised $60 million in a Series A funding round, bringing its total funding to $93 million. The round was led by Seligman Ventures with participation from SBI Investment and existing backers, including Mayfield, Lux Capital, FPV, and Candou Ventures. The financing also brings high-profile industry leaders onto the company’s board, including Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan and Seligman Ventures Managing Partner Umesh Padval.
The funding reflects growing momentum behind AI-driven approaches to semiconductor design, as traditional chip development cycles have become increasingly costly and time-consuming. Cognichip is positioning itself to address these challenges with a full-stack AI system designed to transform chip manufacturing, shifting from sequential workflows to parallel, automated processes.
Founded in 2024, the company has developed a physics-informed foundation model tailored specifically for semiconductor design. Its platform integrates datasets, models, and infrastructure into a unified system to improve efficiency across design, verification, and manufacturing constraints. Cognichip says its technology can reduce chip design costs by up to 75 percent and shorten development timelines by 50 percent, potentially compressing cycles from months to days.
The company’s approach combines AI with physics-based reasoning to navigate complex chip design environments, enabling engineers to operate more like system architects while the AI handles execution. This shift is intended to address a major bottleneck in the semiconductor industry, where increasing chip complexity has outpaced the capabilities of traditional design tools.
Cognichip has spent the past two years building both its technical team and proprietary dataset, bringing together experienced chip architects and AI researchers. The company is already engaged with more than 30 semiconductor companies, including many of the top 20 global players, and reports measurable improvements in production workflows.
The latest funding will support expanded enterprise deployments and further development of its AI-driven design platform, as the company aims to play a central role in re-architecting semiconductor development for the AI era.
KEY QUOTES:
“The semiconductor industry is at a critical juncture; an AI framework for innovation and efficiency will unlock massive global opportunity. Success in this space requires a rare fusion of deep domain expertise combined with advanced AI research and an end-to-end integrated design approach. Cognichip’s groundbreaking, physics-informed foundation model technology and proven leadership team position it to become a generational company.”
Lip-Bu Tan, CEO of Intel
“Semiconductor design cycles have steadily lengthened over the past several decades, creating a major productivity bottleneck for the industry. The next wave of progress to significantly reduce the chip design cycles will not come from incremental optimization of existing design tools, but from using AI to parallelize what has historically been a highly serial chip design process. Cognichip is building the foundation for that shift through physics-informed models, curated datasets, and production-ready integration with the semiconductor design stack. Faraj is a third-time founder who has assembled a uniquely complementary team spanning leading-edge AI, chip design, and system architecture, and we’re excited to partner with them as they redefine how chips are designed in the AI era.”
Umesh Padval, Managing Partner at Seligman Ventures
“Cognichip’s ACI® serves as the essential intelligence layer for the next-generation AI semiconductors. It is expected to reduce design costs by as much as 75% and cut timelines by 50%. SBI’s investment in Cognichip aligns with its existing investments in Preferred Networks, Tenstorrent, Majestic Labs, and EdgeCortix. We are firmly convinced that Cognichip’s ACI® innovation will fundamentally transform the economics of the semiconductor industry.”
Yoshitaka Kitao, Chairman, President & CEO of SBI Holdings
“If you want to unlock meaningful efficiency gains in chip design, you have to do the hard work. Maximum gains only come from integrating models, datasets, and infrastructure into a unified system. If you’re not doing that hard lifting, you’re leaving a lot of chips on the table.”
Faraj Aalaei, Founder and CEO of Cognichip
