Cognichip, a startup developing artificial intelligence to assist in semiconductor design, has secured $60 million in new funding. The round was led by Seligman Ventures, with participation from Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan through his venture firm Walden Catalyst Ventures. The company, which emerged from stealth last year, has now raised a total of $93 million since its founding in 2024.
The firm's core objective is to apply AI to one of the most complex and costly phases of technology development: chip design. Advanced semiconductors, like Nvidia's latest Blackwell GPU containing 104 billion transistors, can take three to five years to progress from conception to mass production, with the design phase alone consuming up to two years.
Addressing a Decades-Old Bottleneck
Cognichip CEO and founder Faraj Aalaei argues that this lengthy timeline creates significant market risk. "In the time it takes to create a new chip... the market can change and make all that investment a waste," Aalaei told TechCrunch. He aims to bring AI-assisted efficiency, commonplace in software engineering, to the semiconductor space.
The company claims its proprietary deep learning model, trained specifically on chip design data, can reduce development costs by more than 75% and cut the design timeline by more than half. "These systems have now become intelligent enough that by just guiding them and telling them what the result is that you want, it can actually produce beautiful code," Aalaei said.
Overcoming the Data Challenge
A significant hurdle for Cognichip has been acquiring training data. Unlike software code, which is often shared openly, chip design intellectual property (IP) is closely guarded. The company has had to develop its own datasets—including synthetic data—license data from partners, and create secure procedures for chipmakers to train models on their proprietary data without exposure.
Where proprietary data is unavailable, Cognichip has utilised open-source alternatives. In a 2025 demonstration, electrical engineering students at San Jose State University used the model to design CPUs based on the freely available RISC-V chip architecture during a hackathon.
A Competitive and Well-Funded Landscape
Cognichip enters a competitive field, challenging established electronic design automation (EDA) giants like Synopsys and Cadence Design Systems, as well as other funded startups. These include Alpha Design AI, which raised a $21 million Series A in October 2025, and ChipAgentsAI, which closed a $74 million extended Series A in February 2026.
Umesh Padval, a managing partner at Seligman Ventures who will join Cognichip's board, highlighted the current investment climate. "If it’s a super cycle for semiconductors and hardware, it’s a super cycle for companies like [Cognichip]," Padval said, calling the capital influx into AI infrastructure the largest he's seen in 40 years.
Proof of Concept Awaited
Despite the substantial funding and ambitious claims, Cognichip has not yet publicly presented a chip designed with its system. The company also declined to name the customers it says it has been collaborating with since September 2025, leaving the practical efficacy of its technology to be fully demonstrated in the market.