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 ta …