
Cognichip is an AI-first company revolutionizing semiconductor design with its Artificial Chip Intelligence (ACI)® platform. ACI® is the world's first physics-informed foundation AI model tailored for chip design, aiming to fundamentally reshape its economics. The platform promises a 75% reduction in design effort, 50% faster completion, and elimination of excessive chip size and power. Cognichip addresses a critical bottleneck in hardware development, where chip design takes 3-5 years compared to rapid AI software innovation. Their approach is AI-first, physics-informed, human-centered, and built for speed, democratizing chip design and allowing chips to keep pace with software advancements. The company was founded by experts from Amazon, Google, Apple, Aquantia, and Synopsys, and has raised $33 million in seed funding from investors including Mayfield, Lux Capital, FPV, and Candou Ventures. Cognichip is leading the AI disruption in the legacy chip design industry.

Cognichip is an AI-first company revolutionizing semiconductor design with its Artificial Chip Intelligence (ACI)® platform. ACI® is the world's first physics-informed foundation AI model tailored for chip design, aiming to fundamentally reshape its economics. The platform promises a 75% reduction in design effort, 50% faster completion, and elimination of excessive chip size and power. Cognichip addresses a critical bottleneck in hardware development, where chip design takes 3-5 years compared to rapid AI software innovation. Their approach is AI-first, physics-informed, human-centered, and built for speed, democratizing chip design and allowing chips to keep pace with software advancements. The company was founded by experts from Amazon, Google, Apple, Aquantia, and Synopsys, and has raised $33 million in seed funding from investors including Mayfield, Lux Capital, FPV, and Candou Ventures. Cognichip is leading the AI disruption in the legacy chip design industry.
Product: Artificial Chip Intelligence (ACI®) — a physics-informed foundation AI model for semiconductor design
Funding: $33M seed (announced 2025-05-15), co-led by Lux Capital and Mayfield
Founders / Leadership: Founded by Faraj Aalaei (Founder, Chair & CEO); co-founders include Ehsan Kamalinejad and Simon Sabato
Headquarters: Redwood City, California (US)
Claimed impact: Says ACI can cut design effort ~75% and shorten cycles ~50%
Semiconductor chip design: long development cycles, high engineering cost, and constrained access to advanced design capabilities.
2024
DeepTech (semiconductor design / AI)
33000000
Participation from FPV Ventures and Candou Ventures; announced as company emerging from stealth
“Seed round co-led by Lux Capital and Mayfield, with participation from FPV Ventures and Candou Ventures”
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We’re hiring teammates at the intersection of AI/ML and chip design—people who love building, move fast, and care about doing excellent work.
About the role
You’ll work at the boundary between our AI and hardware efforts to build systems that make chip design workflows better.
You will:
· Build and iterate on data generation (including synthetic data) for chip-design tasks
· Train ML models
· Design robust methodology
· Integrate with hardware workflows
· Collaborate closely with engineers across AI + hardware + software, and own projects end-to-end
Locations: Bay Area (US) and Toronto (Canada)
Work style: In-person (both offices have a vibrant, builder-heavy culture)
About you
You have baseline knowledge in both domains :
AI/ML: familiarity with deep learning + data/model development
Chip design: basic understanding of circuit design and SystemVerilog implementations
And you have deep strength in at least one of:
· Data pipelines / data engineering
· Reinforcement learning (RL)
· UVM
· Formal verification
· SystemVerilog (advanced)
You’re collaborative, take initiative, and can lead when needed.
We care that you’ve shown you can do exceptional work. Examples:
· You built a product or system that people used
· You made major contributions to a respected codebase / repo
· You’ve done meaningful work in a high-performing environment (such as top companies)
· You shipped a standout project end-to-end
· You have strong publications—or similarly rigorous proof of ability
· Or anything else that clearly demonstrates you can execute at a very high level
We love building. We want people who are passionate about their craft.
We value a talent-to-ego ratio > 1.
About us
You’ll join a highly collaborative team working on a difficult, exciting problem. Collectively, our team has:
· Founded startups and scaled them to IPO
· Led development of products used by millions
· Earned 23,000+ scientific citations
· Held leadership roles at places like Google, NVIDIA, Amazon, Synopsys, and more
· Won medals in international science Olympiads
If you’re excited to tackle hard problems and build real systems, let’s connect.