Architect Labs raises $24M to challenge Broadcom and Marvell with AI-powered chip design

Architect Labs raises $24 million to take on Broadcom, Marvell custom chip business

SAN FRANCISCO, June 18 (Reuters) - Architect Labs said on Thursday it had raised $24 million in seed funding to build a company that will use artificial intelligence to speed and ease the design of custom chips. American chip giant Broadcom (AVGO.O), opens new tab and its smaller rival Marvell (MRVL.O), opens new tab help design custom AI and other general-purpose computing chips for cloud computing companies like Amazon (AMZN.O), opens new tab and Alphabet's (GOOGL.O), opens new tab Google. The custom chips designed by Marvell and Broadcom generate tens of billions of dollars in revenue and offer ⁠an alternative to Nvidia's (NVDA.O), opens new tab powerful hardware. Architect Labs aims to cheapen and speed the process, which now takes roughly two years and costs hundreds of millions of dollars in labor costs and research and development. The company plans to target chip companies to help accelerate the design process but also software companies that could use custom chips to make their applications run faster or more efficiently, Architect co-founder Ebrahim Hussain said in an interview with Reuters. "Their biggest problem today ⁠is not necessarily the backend execution or the layout," Hussain said. "Their biggest thing is how can I take this workload that I want to deliver to the world, whether it be AI or robotics or anything like that, and how can I ⁠build the (chip) architecture." The Palo Alto, California-based company was founded by Hussain and Aaditya Subedi and has about 18 staffers, split between machine learning and hardware. The goal, Subedi said, ⁠is to make chip design as accessible as Taiwan's TSMC has made chip manufacturing. The company's funding round was led by Kindred Ventures and included TQ ⁠Ventures, Race Capital, and Together Fund. Google DeepMind Chief Scientist Jeff Dean, along with executives from OpenAI and Nvidia, have also invested in the company. Reporting by Max A. Cherney in San Francisco; editing by Dvaid Gaffen Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab * Suggested Topics: * Retail & Consumer Max A. Cherney Thomson Reuters Max A. Cherney is a correspondent for Reuters based in San Francisco, where he reports on the semiconductor industry and artificial intelligence. He joined Reuters in 2023 and has previously worked for Barron's magazine and its sister publication, MarketWatch. Cherney graduated from Trent University with a degree in history.

Architect Labs raises $24M for AI custom chip design

The Palo Alto startup, out of stealth with backing from Kindred Ventures and angels including Google DeepMind's Jeff Dean, wants to do for chip design what TSMC did for chip manufacturing: make it available to anyone with a workload. Designing a chip is hard. It takes years, hundreds of millions of dollars, and a tiny pool of experts. Most of them sit inside a few large companies. Architect Labs wants to change that with AI. The Palo Alto startup left stealth on Thursday with a $24mn seed round. Its plan is to build an AI system that designs and verifies custom chips from end to end. Kindred Ventures led the round. TQ Ventures, Race Capital and Together Fund joined in. So did a notable group of angels. Per Reuters, they include Google DeepMind chief scientist Jeff Dean, plus executives from OpenAI and Nvidia. Kindred founder Steve Jang takes a board seat. A 'designless' chip industry The pitch leans on semiconductor history. Two decades ago, the fabless model split design from manufacturing. TSMC then made world-class fabrication available to anyone with a design. Architect Labs wants to repeat that trick one layer up. This time, the target is design itself. It calls the result a "designless" semiconductor industry. In that world, a company no longer has to become a chip company. It does not have to bet a decade on one architecture. It simply brings a workload and gets the silicon to run it. Taking aim at Broadcom and Marvell That goal collides with two of the industry's richest franchises. Reuters reports that Architect Labs is chasing the custom-chip business of Broadcom and Marvell. Both firms design bespoke AI accelerators for cloud giants such as Amazon and Google. Together they earn tens of billions of dollars a year. Demand for custom silicon keeps climbing. AI labs, hyperscalers and robotics makers all want chips tuned to their own workloads. Off-the-shelf hardware can no longer keep up. The squeeze is also fuelling a wider hunt for new chip architectures. "AI models have advanced dramatically across nearly every field, yet chip development cycles remain equally slow and painful," said co-founder Ebrahim Hussain. His fix is not to bolt AI agents onto a decades-old design "flow". Instead, he wants to rebuild the process from scratch, with AI as a "first-class actor". Founders who dropped out to build it The founders are betting their CVs on the idea. Hussain skipped high school and started college at 15, the company says. He then worked on custom chips at Apple and Tesla. His co-founder, Aaditya Subedi, researched AI code verification at Harvard. The two met at Stanford, then dropped out to launch the company. Their team runs to about 18 people, split between machine learning and hardware. Together, the company says, they have taped out more than 80 production chips. The group also includes alumni of Intel, Meta's custom-silicon work, and machine-learning teams at Anthropic, DeepMind and xAI. What comes next Architect Labs says it has already deployed with semiconductor partners. It expects AI-generated designs to tape out on leading-edge nodes later this year. No one has independently verified either claim yet. The new money will scale its compute, deepen its research and fund co-design with early partners. The bigger vision is a tighter loop. In it, models, software and hardware improve together. If the bet pays off, hardware stops being the thing AI has to work around.

Architect Labs raises $24 million to take on Broadcom, Marvell custom chip business

Architect Labs has secured $24 million in seed funding. The company will leverage artificial intelligence to accelerate and simplify the design of custom chips. This innovation aims to reduce the current two-year timeline and multi-million dollar costs associated with chip development. Architect Labs plans to assist both chip manufacturers and software firms in creating more efficient applications through custom hardware. Architect Labs said on Thursday it had raised $24 million in seed funding to build a company that will use artificial intelligence to speed and ease the design of custom chips. American chip giant Broadcom and its smaller rival Marvell help design custom AI and other general-purpose computing ⁠chips for ⁠cloud computing companies like Amazon and Alphabet's Google. The custom chips designed by Marvell and Broadcom generate tens of billions of dollars in revenue and offer an alternative to Nvidia's powerful hardware. Architect Labs aims to cheapen and speed the process, which now takes roughly two years and costs hundreds of millions of dollars in labor costs ⁠and research and development. The company plans to target chip companies to help accelerate the design process but also software companies ⁠that could use custom chips to make their applications run faster or more efficiently, Architect co-founder Ebrahim Hussain said in an interview with Reuters. "Their biggest problem today is not necessarily the backend execution or the layout," Hussain said. "Their biggest thing is how can I take this workload that I want to deliver to the world, whether it be AI or robotics or anything like that, and how can I build the (chip) architecture." The Palo Alto, California-based company was founded by Hussain and Aaditya Subedi and ⁠has about 18 staffers, split between machine learning and hardware. The goal, Subedi said, is to make chip design as accessible as Taiwan's TSMC has made chip manufacturing. The company's funding round was led by Kindred Ventures and included TQ Ventures, Race Capital, and Together Fund. Google DeepMind Chief Scientist Jeff Dean, along with executives from OpenAI and Nvidia, have also invested in the company.