
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”
About the job
Why this matters
At Cognichip, we’re not just building AI—we’re redefi ning what’s possible at the nexus of silicon design and machine learning. As a Staff FPGA Design Engineer, you will fuse chip design expertise with cutting-edge ML to create the intelligent, end-to-end silicon design fl ows. If you thrive on pushing the envelope of the possible and translating cutting-edge ideas into production-grade systems, this is your stage.
What you'll do
● Serve as the domain expert, embedding chip design intuition into a team creating AI chip design assistants
● Architect modern EDA workfl ows, from spec to bitstream
● Drive the development of agentic AI systems capable of authoring syntactically and semantically correct RTL, manage IP integration, and constructing processor-based designs
● Create an ecosystem of libraries, tools, agents, workfl ows, and benchmarks to increase design velocity
● Design and synthesize high-quality, complex datasets (RTL, IP, constraints, failure modes) to train models on hardware physics and logic
● Defi ne rigorous verifi cation standards and guide the agent in generating robust UVM testbenches, assertions and coverage models to ensure generated designs are correct-by-construction
What You Bring
● Masters in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or a closely related fi eld
● 10-15 years of experience in RTL design, or a combination of design and verifi cation
● Deep expertise with AMD/Xilinx (Vivado, Vitis) and Altera/Intel (Quartus) ecosystems, including SoC and complex IP integrations
● Knowledge of industry-standard communication protocols (AXI, Ethernet, PCIe, DDR5, SPI, I2C, NoC, etc)
● Proficiency in SystemVerilog, Python, and TCL
● Excellent written and verbal communication skills, especially to convey chip design knowledge to software engineers and AI scientists
● Comfortable working in a dynamic, research-heavy AI-oriented startup environment
Bonus Points
The following items are not required but are great bonuses:
● Personal projects showcasing innovation, creativity, and continuous learning
● Knowledge of open-source tools and contribution practices (Verilator, CocoTB, Yosys, OpenSTA, etc)
● Experience with multiple areas of chip fl ow (RTL design, validation, synthesis, physical design, etc)
● Demonstrated coursework or project experience in machine learning and/or deep learning
What it's like here
We’re a fast-moving AI startup with a collaborative, high-trust culture. You’ll work with top-tier engineers, scientists, and builders—solving hard problems that sit at the intersection of cloud computing, AI, and chip design. We value technical excellence, ownership, and the freedom to experiment. If you’re excited to build the future of engineering, you’ll feel right at home.
Logistics
This position is available in Toronto. We believe a mindmeld between engineers and scientists leads to our professional growth and to great products; we have a hybrid schedule with four days in offi ce, one day remote.
How to apply
Don’t meet every single requirement? Feel over-qualifi ed? That’s okay—if you're excited about our mission, we’d still love to hear from you. We are growing fast and need a world class team of various experience levels.
| Company |
|---|