
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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About the Role
We are seeking an AI Engineer to design, implement, and deploy advanced agentic AI systems. In this role, you’ll build production-ready AI agents that can reason across multiple steps, leverage a mixture of proprietary models, integrate with semiconductor design tools, and operate autonomously over a long period of time.
You’ll work with state of the art frameworks to create pipelines that combine LLM-based reasoning, knowledge grounding, and multi-agent orchestration. This is a high-impact role where you’ll partner with research and engineering teams to translate cutting-edge chip design workflows into reliable, scalable agentic solutions for real-world use cases.
Key Responsibilities
Desired Skillset
Required Qualifications
Preferred Qualifications
What We Offer