Cognichip Emerges from Stealth with $33M to Revolutionize Chip Design Using AI

Cognichip emerges from stealth with the goal of using generative AI to develop new chips | TechCrunch

Chips are a critical component of the AI industry. But new chips don't hit the market with the same speed as new AI models and products do. Cognichip has a lofty goal of creating a foundational AI model that can help bring new chips to market faster. San Francisco-based Cognichip is working to build a physics-informed foundational AI model that can be used by semiconductor companies to speed up the development process of new chips. The company is calling this approach "artificial chip intelligence" and hopes it can help speed up chip production times by 50% and reduce the associated costs as well. This ambitious idea comes from semiconductor industry veteran Faraj Aalaei, who worked at various companies including Fujitsu Network Communications and Centillium Communications. Aalaei told TechCrunch that his company's origin story begins back in 2015. At the time, Aalaei was a member of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, which would often meet to talk about what was ailing their industry. He was growing concerned about what was happening in the semiconductor industry. He gave a presentation to the group about the stark drop in venture capital investing into semiconductor companies, which peaked at 200 deals a year in 2000, he said, and dropped to just one or two a year by 2015. "I essentially warned the other CEOs that this cannot be good for us," Aalaei said. "It cannot be good for the semiconductor industry in America, and that what we needed to do is to fundamentally change things about it. If that trend continues, then we're going to lose our competitiveness. We're going to lose the energy that brings in new ideas to the table." Considering how long it takes new chips to come to market, it's not surprising these companies weren't attracting venture investors, he said. Then he sat on the idea for almost a decade. He went on to found Candou Ventures in 2016, and through that fund got to watch the rise in AI startups. When he realized that advancements in generative AI had gotten to a point where it could be used to potentially help solve some of the semiconductor industry's existent challenges, he decided to launch Cognichip in 2024. Cognichip has been operating in stealth ever since and has amassed a team of AI experts from places like Stanford, Google, and MIT to start building. Aalaei said it will take at least a few years to build the model to "ultimate performance" but said it should be able to help companies before it reaches that goal. "When we get to that point, this artificial chip intelligence, we will be building a system that can actually act like an expert engineer," Aalaei said. "Once we achieve that vision, then you can actually get the same work done with a fraction of the people and in much, much shorter time." Cognichip is now emerging from stealth with $33 million in seed funding in a round co-led by Lux Capital and Mayfield with participation from FPV and Candou Ventures. Navin Chaddha, a managing partner at Mayfield, told TechCrunch that when he was introduced to Aalaei, he felt they were "cut from the same cloth." The vast majority of work in the semiconductor industry is still being done by humans; he said he thinks the timing is right to bring AI into the mix. "This is a major pain point, and the solution this company will provide will be a pain killer and not a vitamin for the semiconductor industry," Chaddha said. "If you don't have humans doing the job, can AI do it where there's shortage of talent? Number one, great team, second, [they are] solving a real pain point in a massive, trillion-dollar industry." Aalaei said that he hopes Cognichip will also be able to help democratize access to building chips so that more semiconductor companies can get started and land investment. Easier access also means that smaller companies can build more specific chips for specialized or smaller models, too, he said. All of this will depend on when, or if, the company can reach artificial chip intelligence. "What we're doing is not some incremental change," Aalaei said. "We're not building an [electronic design automation] tool, we're not trying to tweak the process a little bit. We're trying to set a new goal for our industry and bring some major change."

Cognichip raises $33M to speed up chip development with AI - SiliconANGLE

Cognichip Inc., a startup working to make chip design teams more productive, launched today with $33 million in initial funding. Lux Capital and Mayfield jointly led the seed round. They were joined by FPV and Candou Ventures. Cognichip is led by co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Faraj Aalaei. He was previously the CEO of Aquantia Corp., a network chip supplier that was acquired by Marvell Technology Inc. in 2019 for $452 million. Cognichip's other co-founders earlier worked at major tech firms such as Apple Inc. and Google LLC. Cognichip is building a foundation artificial intelligence model called Artificial Chip Intelligence, or ACI. It promises to reduce the amount of manual work involved in developing processors. Cognichip reportedly believes that the model will take several years to reach "ultimate performance," but expects it to start benefiting chip designers earlier. According to the company, ACI can both speed up chip development and reduce the associated costs. Cognichip sees its model cutting the price of processor design projects by up to 75%. Additionally, the company says that ACI can identify opportunities to fine-tune a chip's performance and efficiency. The semiconductor industry has already started using AI to automate some engineering tasks. One of those tasks is the process of fine-tuning chip blueprints to more closely align them with user requirements. After engineers craft a processor design, it's theoretically possible to create millions of new variations with slightly different parameters. Some versions might be faster than the original, while others may require less power or space. An AI model can automatically try every single variation to find the one that best meets project requirements. Companies are also using AI to automate other aspects of the chip design workflow. In 2020, Google debuted AlphaChip, an internally-developed neural network that helps optimize its TPU chips' floor plans. A processor's floor plan determines the location of the circuits it includes. Last year, Google detailed that AlphaChip has helped its engineers improve four generations of TPU chips. Other companies, meanwhile, are using AI to scan chips for bugs before they enter mass production. Engineers don't test processor designs manually but rather write scripts to perform the task. AI models can be used to enhance those scripts and, in some cases, generate new ones from scratch. "As a founder who has successfully taken two semiconductor companies public, and as a venture capitalist, I have seen firsthand how semiconductor startups are often deemed 'unfundable' due to high costs and long timelines," Aalaei said. "With the rise of Generative AI, we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to rethink how chips are designed."