insider brief
- Cognichip raises an oversubscribed $60 million Series A, bringing total funding to $93 million to advance its AI-driven semiconductor design platform and expand enterprise adoption.
- The company’s Artificial Chip Intelligence (ACI®) uses physics-based AI models to automate and accelerate chip design, reducing costs by up to 75% and shortening development schedules by 50%.
- Backed by leading semiconductor leaders and working with the world’s top chip companies, CogniChip aims to transform traditional design processes and address bottlenecks in AI hardware development.
Press Release — CogniChip, Inc., a pioneer in ACI® (artificial chip intelligence) for semiconductor design, announced an oversubscribed $60 million Series A financing led by Seligman Ventures with participation from SBI Investment and other semiconductor-focused investors. All seed investors, including Mayfield, Lux Capital, FPV, and Candou Ventures, participated on a pro rata basis, bringing the company’s total funding to $93 million. As part of the funding, Umesh Padval, Managing Partner in seligman ventures A former CEO of a semiconductor company, he has joined CogniChip’s board of directors. Lip Buu Thanh, Intel CEOalso participated in the round and joined Cognichip’s board of directors.
As a pioneering leader in the transition to AI-enabled chip design, Cognichip’s heavy investment reflects a growing recognition across the semiconductor ecosystem that incremental improvements are no longer sufficient. As chip complexity increases across digital, analog, mixed-signal, and advanced node designs, the infrastructure required for semiconductor design and manufacturing must similarly fundamentally evolve.
Semiconductor veteran backs Cognichip approach
Lip-Bu Tan is a visionary venture capitalist and technology executive who is a pioneer in the modern semiconductor ecosystem, and brings unparalleled leadership experience to CogniChip’s Board of Directors. As former CEO of Cadence Design Systems, he led the company’s transformation into a global leader in computational engineering software. As CEO of Intel, Tan operates at the intersection of global semiconductor manufacturing, design infrastructure, and innovative AI.
The appointment marks a high-profile reunion between Tan and CogniChip founder and CEO Faraj Araei. The two have worked together for the past 30 years at Aquantia and Centillium Communications, with Tan serving on the board under Arai’s leadership and the partnership culminating in two successful IPOs. By joining Cognichip, Tan will reunite with a proven CEO and once again disrupt a mature industry with an innovative AI-first architectural blueprint.
“The semiconductor industry is at a critical juncture, and AI frameworks for innovation and efficiency will open up huge global opportunities,” he said. Rip part Tan. “Success in this space requires a rare blend of deep domain expertise, combined with advanced AI research and an end-to-end integrated design approach. CogniChip’s groundbreaking physics-based fundamental model technology and proven leadership team position CogniChip to be the next generation company.”
Umesh Padval, Managing Partner of Seligman Ventures and a veteran CEO of semiconductor companies, has served on the boards of leading semiconductor companies including Integrated Device Technology (acquired by Renesas Electronics), Elantec Semiconductor (acquired by Intersil Corporation), Mellanox Technologies (acquired by NVIDIA), Monolithic Power Systems, and PA Semi (acquired by Apple).
“Semiconductor design cycles have steadily gotten longer over the past few decades, creating a major productivity bottleneck for the industry,” he said. Umesh Padwal. “The next wave of advances to dramatically shorten chip design cycles will come not from incremental optimization of existing design tools, but from using AI to parallelize the traditionally highly serialized chip design process. CogniChip is building the foundation for that transition through physics-based models, curated datasets, and integration with production-ready semiconductor design stacks. We have assembled a unique and complementary team across AI, chip design, and system architecture, and we are excited to partner with them as they redefine how chips are designed in the AI era.”
Japan-based SBI Investment expands this collaboration of semiconductor and infrastructure investors, bringing a global perspective on the future of computing and AI hardware. With a growing portfolio of next-generation semiconductor and AI companies across the board, SBI’s investment reflects a shared belief that advancements in AI require a fundamental rethinking of how chips are designed, built, and deployed.
“Cognichip’s ACI® will serve as a critical intelligence layer for next-generation AI semiconductors, and is expected to reduce design costs by as much as 75% and shorten timelines by 50%.” Yoshitaka Kitao Representative Director, Chairman and President of SBI Holdings. “SBI’s investment in Cognichip is consistent with existing investments in Preferred Networks, Tenstorrent, Majestic Labs, and EdgeCortix. We are confident that Cognichip’s ACI® innovation will fundamentally transform the economics of the semiconductor industry.”
Beyond the Wrapper: Two Years of Intensive Model and Dataset Investments
Over the past two years, Cognichip has built a team of experienced chip architects paired with cutting-edge AI scientists, including World Olympic medalists in mathematics and physics. This domain integration reflects the technological depth required to build AI for semiconductor design. As a result, Cognichip has created one of the industry’s most detailed datasets under governance, based on complex design, validation, and manufacturing constraints.
“If you want to achieve meaningful efficiency gains in chip design, you have to work hard,” he said. Faraj Alaei, Founder; Cognichip CEO. “The greatest benefits will only come from integrating models, datasets, and infrastructure into an integrated system. If you don’t do that hard work, you’re leaving a lot of chips on the table.”
Unlike agent approaches that rely on thin wrappers built around general-purpose LLMs, Cognichip’s deep technology investments make ACI® an industry leader. only A full-stack, AI-enabled design solution combines high end-to-end cognitive strength, unified planning and orchestration, unlimited context management, predictable operational efficiency, and secure deployment into chip design environments.
Reimagining chip design for the AI era
AI systems are improving every day. But designing the chips that power them still takes years and hundreds of millions of dollars. This creates a circular constraint where AI scaling is ultimately limited by the hardware driving the AI, which cannot evolve fast enough to keep up. To unlock the full potential of AI, Cognichip is fundamentally reimagining how chips are designed and built.
Founded in 2024 by semiconductor and AI veterans, Cognichip introduced ACI® (Artificial Chip Intelligence), a type of AI that understands, learns, and solves chip design problems with designer-level cognitive abilities. Built on a proprietary physics-based foundational model, ACI® blends logic and physics-based reasoning to navigate complex design spaces and transform traditional serial workflows into concurrent, adaptive, and highly automated design processes. This enables every engineer to act as an architect while ACI® supports technical execution, reducing development time, cost, and complexity.
As a result, Cognichip shortens design cycles from months to just days, reducing costs by 75% while optimizing power, performance, and area, making silicon faster, cheaper, and more available for customers.
Entering the next stage of enterprise deployment
With $93 million in total funding and strong support from semiconductor industry leaders, CogniChip is deepening its engagement with high-quality companies across the global semiconductor ecosystem. The company currently works with more than 30 semiconductor companies across digital, analog, mixed-signal and foundry environments, including many of the top 20 semiconductor leaders.
These initiatives reflect strong market validation and measurable results across real-world production workflows, with customers observing significant reductions in design cycles and costs while maintaining rigorous performance and manufacturability standards.
To learn more about Cognichip’s vision for enterprise-ready AI in chip design, visit www.cognichip.ai.
About Cognichip
Cognichip is developing the world’s first Artificial Chip Intelligence (ACI®) to rethink chip design. Founded by experts from Amazon, Google, Apple, Aquantia, Synopsys, and KLA, the company tackles the high cost and inaccessibility of chip development, enabling hardware to evolve as quickly as software innovation.
With total funding of $93 million from Seligman Ventures, SBI Investment, Mayfield, Lux Capital, and Candou Ventures, Cognichip’s ACI® shortens design cycles by 50%, reduces development costs by 75%, and optimizes power, performance, and efficiency. ACI® accelerates innovation and expands access to semiconductor technology by making it easier, more affordable, and available to a wider range of innovators. For more information, please visit www.cognichip.ai.
About Seligman Ventures
Seligman Ventures is the venture capital arm of Seligman Investments, focused on supporting technology companies from early stages to pre-IPO across AI and cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity, and modern data center hardware. Led by Managing Partners Umesh Padval and Ashish Kakran, and CFO and Operating Partner Eddie Ackerman, the firm partners with founders who bring together deep operational, investment and public market expertise to build category-defining companies. For more information, please visit seligman.com.
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VSC representing Cognichip
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