The most advanced silicon chips have accelerated the development of artificial intelligence. Now, can AI return the favor?
Cognichip is building a deep learning model to work alongside engineers as they design new computer chips. The problem it is trying to solve is one the industry has lived with for decades: chip design is enormously complex, ruinously expensive, and slow. Advanced chips take three to five years to go from conception to mass production; the design phase alone can take as long as two years before physical layout begins. Consider that the latest line of Nvidia GPUs, Blackwell, contains 104 billion transistors — that’s a lot to line up.
In the time it takes to create a new chip, Cognichip CEO and founder Faraj Aalaei says, the market can change and make all that investment a waste. Aalaei’s goal is to bring the kind of AI tools that software engineers have used to speed their work into the semiconductor design space.
“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 told TechCrunch.
He says the firm’s technology can reduce the cost of chip development by more than 75% and cut the timeline by more than half.
The company emerged from stealth last year and said Wednesday that it had raised $60 million in new funding led by Seligman Ventures, with notable participation from Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan, who invested through his venture firm Walden Catalyst Ventures and will be joining Cognichip’s board. Umesh Padval, a managing partner at Seligman, will also join the board. Cognichip has now raised $93 million altogether since its founding in 2024.
Still, Cognichip can’t yet …