Startup Funding: February 2024


A startup developing AI chips dedicated to low-power AI inferencing captured one of the largest rounds of February. The startup, Recogni, already offers a low-power vision inferencing chip. Several other sizeable rounds were focused on the automotive space, with robotaxis, autonomous delivery, and the sensors that enable them. Another active area, power electronics drew funding for several c... » read more

Startup Funding: January 2023


Quantum computing had a good month in January, collectively raising over $240 million. A significant chunk of that went to a full-stack quantum company whose processers use neutral atoms manipulated by optical tweezers. Other companies funded this month are developing trapped ion processors, photonics-based processors, and quantum memories, which will be essential for quantum networking. Two co... » read more

Chip Industry Startup Funding Annual Report & Analysis: 2022


Introduction New ideas fuel the semiconductor industry, and money enables those ideas. Tracking what startups get funded is one way to see which ideas are more viable and which problems need to be solved most urgently. In general, the more startups working on a solution to a particular problem, the greater the need for a viable solution — and the more likely one will be developed. Investo... » read more

Startup Funding: November 2022


November was a month for mega-rounds, with ten companies receiving investments of at least $100 million. One of those is a startup providing connectivity solutions for data centers and enabling use of the memory pooling functionality in the latest update to the CXL standard. Two quantum computer startups were part of the $100M+ club this month — one using very cold atoms to take on not only q... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Intellectual Property Flex Logix inked an agreement with the Air Force Research Laboratory, Sensors Directorate (AFRL/RY) covering any Flex Logix IP technology for use in all US Government-funded programs for research and prototyping purposes with no license fees. “Our first license with AFRL for EFLX eFPGA in GlobalFoundries 12nm process was highly successful, with more than a half dozen pr... » read more

Week In Review: Manufacturing, Test


Chipmakers, OEMs At Intel’s Architecture Day this week, the company revealed several new chip architectures. Some were already announced, while others are new. These include Intel’s first performance hybrid architecture, a data center architecture, a discrete gaming graphics processing unit (GPU) architecture, infrastructure processing units (IPUs), and a data center GPU architecture. Here... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Tools Cadence teamed up with Tower Semiconductor to release a silicon-validated SP4T RF SOI switch reference design flow using the Cadence Virtuoso Design Platform and RF Solution. The reference design flow targets advanced 5G wireless, wireline infrastructure, and automotive IC product development and include a set of mixed-signal and RF design, simulation, system analysis and signoff tools t... » read more

Week In Review: Design, Low Power


Tools Cadence unveiled Cerebrus Intelligent Chip Explorer, a new machine learning-based tool to drive the Cadence RTL-to-signoff implementation flow. The tool aims to use reinforcement learning to find flow solutions that otherwise might not be explored and applies models to future designs. The company says it can improve productivity up to 10X and PPA up to 20% with optimization of the flow f... » read more

Startup Funding: May 2021


Big investment poured into AI hardware companies this month, with a focus on edge applications. Companies are experimenting with different architectures, including analog-focused devices and those that are capable of withstanding the harsh conditions of space. IP and EDA startups in China also drew funding as the country tries to create a full chip design ecosystem. Plus, PCB assembly, photonic... » read more

Startup Funding: January 2020


A dozen tech startup companies started 2020 with new funding, raising +$500 million between them. Three companies received an impressive amount of investment. Stanford spinout Skylo launched from stealth with $116M in total funding and a bold plan to connect IoT devices, particularly sensors in remote or difficult-to-access environments, with hubs that link them to a network of satellites. ... » read more