Ubitium has raised $14 million in new seed funding to advance its universal processor architecture for Physical AI. The round was led by Ibex Investors, with participation from OpenOcean, existing investors KBC Focus Fund, Runa Capital and Inflection, and a personal investment from Florian Seibel, co-founder and co-CEO of Quantum Systems. The financing brings Ubitium’s total seed funding to $18 million since the company was founded in 2024.
The Düsseldorf, Germany-based semiconductor startup is developing a single processor designed to handle the three primary computing functions required by autonomous machines: sensing the physical environment, running AI inference and controlling machines in real time. Ubitium aims to replace the combination of digital signal processors, neural processing units and CPUs that are commonly integrated into drones, robots, vehicles and industrial equipment today.
Rather than relying on separate specialized logic blocks, Ubitium’s architecture uses an array of programmable elements that can dynamically allocate computing resources among signal processing, AI and real-time control as workloads change. The architecture also uses unified memory and standard RISC-V tools, which the company believes can reduce data movement between chips, simplify software development and give manufacturers a computing platform that can be reused across multiple products.
Ubitium has already produced its first silicon. Its UB108 chip, manufactured on Samsung’s 8nm process with 256 processing elements, has demonstrated signal processing, AI inference and real-time control on the same reconfigurable array. The company plans to tape out its first commercial processor, the UB410, with 4,096 processing elements and deliver evaluation units in 2027. Initial customers are developing high-resolution radar and audio systems, while longer-term target applications include autonomous systems such as drones.
The company’s technology portfolio includes 17 granted patents covering its core architecture, while its team collectively brings more than 250 career patents, more than 350 peer-reviewed publications and semiconductor experience from companies including Intel, Nvidia, Apple and Texas Instruments.
KEY QUOTES:
“Physical AI machines bring a whole new set of computing challenges, and the inference isn’t the hardest one. Sensing the real world and controlling the machine in it are just as hard, and today those still run on separate chips. We built one Physical AI processor that does all three, proved it in silicon in a year, and this funding turns it into a product.”
Hyun Shin Cho, CEO And Co-Founder Of Ubitium
“An autonomous machine operating in the real world must keep working when communications are unavailable. It has to process its surroundings, make decisions and control itself on board, within strict limits on power and weight. Today that means integrating a stack of chips that were not designed to work together, and every one of them costs weight, power and integration time we don’t have. Ubitium is building the one processor that does that whole job. That’s why I invested.”
Florian Seibel, Co-Founder And Co-CEO Of Quantum Systems
“The pace of AI is only increasing, far exceeding the ability of hardware to keep up and manage. Ubitium solves this with a universal reconfigurable architecture that can deploy the latest advances on a single piece of silicon with a single set of development tools. Ubitium is truly hardware at the pace of software.”
Jeffrey Peters, Partner At Ibex Investors
