SiMa.ai Secures $150M Series C Funding at $1.45B Valuation for Physical AI Chip Development

SiMa.ai Closes $150 Million Series C Funding Round

SiMa.ai, a San Jose-based physical AI chip developer, announced it has raised $150 million in Series C funding at a $1.45 billion valuation1

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. Fidelity Management & Research Company and Amplify co-led the oversubscribed round, with participation from Alter Venture Partners, Dell Technologies Capital, and StepStone Group3

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. New investors joining the round include AllianceBernstein, Baron Capital, and J.P. Morgan4

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. This brings SiMa.ai's total capital raised to over $500 million, marking a significant jump from its previous $960 million valuation after an $85 million Series B in July 20252

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Building an Alternative to Nvidia for Edge Computing

Founded in 2018 by Krishna Rangasayee, former COO of chipmaker Groq, SiMa.ai develops energy-efficient chips and software that enable robots, drones, cameras, and autonomous vehicles to run AI directly on the device1

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. The company positions itself as a lower-power, more affordable alternative to Nvidia's GPUs for what it calls Physical AI—machines that sense and act in the real world2

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. By eliminating the need to send data back and forth to the cloud, SiMa.ai's embedded AI compute platform delivers low-latency performance while reducing deployment complexity3

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"Physical AI in humanoids, automotive, and drones is the gateway to a $50 trillion market that has remained largely untouched by modern innovation," said Rangasayee5

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. "While others are still figuring out the pieces or repurposing their cloud offerings, we've built the entire puzzle."

Scaling Palette Neat and Next-Generation Hardware

The Series C funding will accelerate the scaling of Palette Neat, SiMa.ai's agentic software environment for developers working on Physical AI applications2

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. The platform cuts deployment time from months to days or hours, addressing a critical pain point for enterprises integrating AI into physical devices5

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. The capital will also fund next-generation hardware slated for the first half of 2028, which SiMa.ai says will deliver 1,000 TOPS (trillions of operations per second) of compute in purpose-built Physical AI silicon2

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The new hardware offerings will include machine learning IP, chiplets, and system-on-chip solutions targeting medium to high-end drones, humanoid robotics, automotive advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), and AI-powered cockpits3

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. For context, Nvidia's highest-end Jetson AGX Thor series hits 2,000 FP4 TOPS for full-scale humanoid robots, while mainstream modules like Jetson T2000 and T3000 deliver around 400 and 865 TOPS respectively3

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Strong Commercial Traction and Market Opportunity

SiMa.ai's revenue growth quadrupled year-over-year between 2024 and 2025, though the company did not disclose specific revenue figures2

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. The startup's customer and partner network spans Fortune 500 leaders and specialized technology innovators, including Bosch, Emerson, Micron, Synopsys, TRUMPF, ARK Electronics, AVerMedia, Kontron, and L&T Technology Services3

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According to Counterpoint Research, the global market for Physical AI devices is projected to reach cumulative shipments of 145 million units by 20355

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. This surge represents AI's transition from software applications into tangible, real-world consumer and industrial hardware. Mike Dauber, General Partner at Amplify Partners, noted that SiMa.ai has "consistently proven its ability to out-innovate and out-execute the rest of the market, dramatically reducing the complexity of deploying advanced AI models on physical edge devices"5

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Implications for the Physical AI Landscape

SiMa.ai's funding comes amid growing interest in chips for AI on edge devices. Earlier this year, Analog Devices agreed to pay $1.35 billion for edge AI chipmaker Alif, while NEURA and SECO announced plans to build robot compute modules in Europe2

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. The competitive landscape highlights increasing demand for low-power chips and software that can handle complex AI workloads without relying on expensive, power-hungry cloud infrastructure.

Scott Darling, President and Managing Director at Dell Technologies Capital, emphasized that "as enterprise intelligence migrates into the physical world, it's been challenged by the tradeoff between performance and power. SiMa.ai is shattering that barrier"5

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. As autonomous systems become more prevalent across industries, watch for SiMa.ai's ability to deliver on its 2028 hardware roadmap and capture market share in humanoid robotics and automotive ADAS applications.