Kandou AI, a fabless semiconductor design company focused on high-speed, energy-efficient connectivity solutions, announced it has raised $225 million in an oversubscribed Series A funding round to address critical data movement challenges in artificial intelligence infrastructure.
The round was led by Maverick Silicon, with participation from strategic investors including SoftBank Group Corp., Synopsys, Cadence Design Systems, and Alchip Technologies. Existing investors also joined the financing, signaling strong confidence in the company’s approach to solving AI system bottlenecks.
As AI models continue to scale rapidly, the industry is increasingly constrained not by compute power, but by the ability to efficiently move data between processors and memory. Kandou AI is positioning itself to address this challenge through advanced interconnect technologies designed specifically for the AI era.
The company’s solutions focus on improving bandwidth, reach, and energy efficiency in data movement, particularly across copper interconnects. By leveraging patented signaling and SerDes technologies, Kandou AI aims to enable multi-terabit connectivity while reducing cost and power consumption, making large-scale AI systems more scalable and accessible.
The newly raised capital will support several strategic priorities, including scaling production of its AI connectivity chips, expanding relationships with hyperscale and enterprise customers, and accelerating development of next-generation chip and IP solutions.
Kandou AI has recently made progress on multiple fronts, including the successful tapeout of its next-generation SerDes technology, growth in its retimer business, expansion of its global engineering footprint with a new design center in Hyderabad, and the addition of experienced industry leaders to its executive team.
With more than 20 million silicon units already shipped using its technology, the company is leveraging its expertise in semiconductor design and information theory to redefine how data is transmitted across AI infrastructure. Its approach is intended to unlock higher performance from existing copper-based systems, enabling more efficient and cost-effective scaling of AI deployments.
KEY QUOTES:
“This funding round is a clear validation of our vision from our partners and customers. It accelerates our goal of transforming AI hardware through products built on our groundbreaking copper-based interconnect and system IP. Our initial products will focus on AI systems and high-speed rack connectivity piercing the 448G barrier and beyond, with plans to expand into broader AI infrastructure over time. We are excited to partner with leading hyperscale and enterprise customers to bring these next-generation AI systems to market.”
Srujan Linga, Co-Founder And CEO Of Kandou AI
“The performance and scalability of next-gen AI clusters will be defined by the ability to move massive amounts of data between chips in an energy efficient way. This is where Kandou AI’s unique strength lies, we are proud to be supporting their vision of transforming AI system design to enable build out of scalable, energy-efficient AI systems of the future.”
Manish Muthal, Senior Managing Director At Maverick Silicon
“AI performance is increasingly limited by how efficiently data moves between compute and memory. Kandou AI’s advanced coding techniques for high-speed copper interconnects complements the industry’s push to multi-terabit connectivity. By leveraging Synopsys’ pre-verified, high-quality IP, Kandou AI is speeding time to market for their next-generation solutions.”
Neeraj Paliwal, Senior Vice President Of Silicon IP Product Management At Synopsys
“As hardware architectures evolve to meet increasingly data-intensive workloads, inter-chip data movement has emerged as a critical bottleneck to scalable, high-performance AI infrastructure. We’re pleased to support Kandou AI as they leverage our EDA solutions to develop their next generation connectivity technologies to help address these scaling challenges.”
Nimish Modi, Senior Vice President And General Manager, Strategy And New Ventures At Cadence
