Maieutic Semiconductor Raises $4.15 Million to Revolutionize Analog IC Design with GenAI

Bengaluru Startup Secures $4.15 Million, Targets Faster Analogue IC Design | AIM

Maieutic Semiconductor aims to utilise GenAI to reduce chip design cycles and accelerate time-to-market. Maieutic Semiconductor, a deep-tech startup based in Bengaluru, has raised $4.15 million in seed funding to accelerate the development of its generative AI-driven platform for analogue semiconductor design. The round was co-led by Endiya Partners and Exfinity Venture Partners. The company plans to utilise the capital to expand its engineering team, reduce chip design cycles, and accelerate time-to-market. It aims to tackle longstanding inefficiencies in analogue integrated circuit (IC) development, which is a critical component in automotive, industrial, and communications technology. Founded by Gireesh Rajendran (CEO), Ashish Lachhwani (CBO), Rakesh Kumar (CPO), and Krishna Sankar (CTO), the startup is focusing on early-stage chip design, design reviews, and analysis of trade-offs. Each founder has over 20 years of experience, collectively holding more than 70 patents. "We're combining decades of deep analogue and semiconductor experience with cutting-edge AI techniques," Rajendran said. "Our copilot reduces the design cycle from weeks to days and brings intelligence to every trade-off." Maieutic's approach is centred on generative AI, aiming to automate parts of a process that has resisted change for decades. Its platform targets the manual and time-intensive nature of analogue workflows, an area where domain expertise is usually essential. "Analogue workflows have remained largely manual," Sateesh Andra, managing partner at Endiya Partners, said. "Maieutic's AI-first approach can make the process faster, more intelligent, and globally competitive." Exfinity Venture Partners also expressed confidence in the startup's potential to lead change in a legacy domain. With the global semiconductor market projected to exceed $1 trillion by 2030, and analogue chips forming the backbone of modern devices, Maieutic's innovation arrives at a crucial juncture. India's growing focus on semiconductor manufacturing and design further underlines the relevance of homegrown efforts like Maieutic's. The company now plans to hire aggressively and deliver a platform that brings intelligence and automation to a traditionally manual field.

Deeptech startup Maieutic Semiconductor raises $4.15 million from Endiya Partners, Exfinity Venture Partners - The Economic Times

The fresh funds will be used to expand the startup's engineering team, improve time to market, and hire talent. Maieutic is developing a GenAI copilot for analogue design, which will help speed up the early stages of chip development, automatically find bugs, and improve decision-making around design trade-offs.Bengaluru-based deeptech startup Maieutic Semiconductor has raised $4.15 million in seed funding in a round co-led by Endiya Partners and Exfinity Venture Partners. The Bengaluru-based startup was founded by Gireesh Rajendran, Ashish Lachhwani, Rakesh Kumar, and Krishna Sankar. Maieutic is developing what they call the world's first GenAI copilot for analogue design. This platform aims to speed up the early stages of chip development, automatically find bugs, and improve decision-making around design trade-offs. With the fresh funds, Maieutic plans to expand its engineering team and significantly improve time to market. The company is also hiring to build out its platform. The deployment of its product is yet to begin. Semiconductor design has resisted change and modern productivity enhancements, cofounder and chief executive officer Rajendra told ET. "Maieutic's copilot can reduce the design cycle from weeks to days, spot inconsistencies without expert intervention, and bring intelligence to every trade-off," he said. The company set out to create its own AI platform because chip design requires a lot of domain-specific know-how, which is absent in a generic model. So, the first task was to build a clean enough data set that could be used to aid specific circuit designers. "When we go through the process, there are lots of manual efforts related specifically to circuit design in creating test benches, drawing circuits, connecting outputs, and probing. So, with this agentic workflow, there is room to automate all these non-creative tasks, which leaves the designer to focus only on the creative tasks," CTO Sankar explained. Hallucinations in AI is a crucial aspect to solve for, Sankar added, because for the circuit designer, accuracy is key. "The tool will have enough guardrails or training data around it to help make sure that the designer gets the accurate responses," he said. "Maieutic is solving a real problem in the semiconductor design space, an area that has long resisted automation despite its growing complexity. Analogue workflows in particular have remained largely manual and dependent on domain expertise and time-intensive iteration," Sateesh Andra, managing partner at Endiya Partners, said in a statement.

Maieutic Semiconductor Bags $4.15 Mn In Seed Round

The capital will be used to expand the engineering teams and improve time to market Semiconductor design-focussed GenAI startup Maieutic Semiconductor has raised $4.15 Mn (about INR 35 Cr) in its seed funding round co-led by Endiya Partners and Exfinity Venture Partners. The startup plans to deploy the capital to expand the engineering teams and improve time to market. The chip design cycle in semiconductors typically takes weeks and is also resource intensive. To shorten this process, Gireesh Rajendran, Ashish Lachhwani, Rakesh Kumar, and Krishna Sankar founded Maieutic Semiconductor in 2025 to build an AI-powered copilot to automate the early-stage design process for making analog IC chips. The founders have years of experience in chip designing and semiconductor space. Rajendran, Lachhwani and Kumar founded Steradian Semiconductors earlier, which was acquired by Tokyo-based semiconductor solutions company Renesas Electronics in 2022. Steradian was a fabless semiconductor company specialising in imaging radars. Meanwhile, Sankar was previously associated with LifeSignals, which makes chips for collecting biomedical data. Maieutic claims that its GenAI-first solution automates early-stage chip design, domain expert review process, and enables intelligent analysis of design trade-offs. The startup's AI platform is built on a customised AI model trained on the know-how of the semiconductor design process. The model is trained on data sets which can aid designers to make their work more efficient. Maieutic competes directly with Alpha Design AI in the global GenAI platform space for chip designing, while it also partially locks horns with Vixiv, Empower Operations and Aera. These players will fight it out to capture a share of the pie in the global semiconductors market, which is poised to become a $1 Tn opportunity by 2030. Maieutic's fundraise comes at a time when the Centre is leaving no stone unturned to make India a powerhouse in chip manufacturing. As a result, a number of startups are mushrooming in the sector to capitalise on India's semiconductor market, which is expected to reach the $270 Bn mark by 2032. Investors are also bullish on the startups in the segment, with the likes of Mindgrove Technologies and C2i Semiconductors bagging funding over the past year.