Raja Koduri’s Oxmiq Labs raises $35M to lower the design cost of custom AI silicon
Artificial intelligence chipmaking startup Oxmiq Labs Inc. says it wants to become the next Arm Holdings Plc. after raising $35 million in a Series A funding, bringing its total amount raised to date to $60 million.
Today’s round was led by investors that included Fundomo and Samsung Catalyst Fund, and saw participation from MediaTek, AM Intelligence Labs, Pegatron Venture Capital, CDIB-TEN, Darwin Ventures and Morgan Creek Digital.
Oxmiq is founded and led by the respected graphics processing unit architect Raja Koduri (pictured), who formerly served as the chief architect and Executive Vice President of Intel Corp.’s architecture, graphics and software division. In an interview with Reuters, Joduri explained that his company is working on a new chip design architecture and software that will dramatically lower the cost of developing AI chips. The funds from today’s round will help to scale Oxmiq’s proprietary GPU architecture OxCore, which makes it easier for semiconductor firms and AI systems builders to design custom silicon without a full chip program. ‘
According to Koduri, developing a cutting-edge AI chip usually costs hundreds of millions of dollars and requires several years. It’s an intricate process that involves making the silicon design plans and building the software needed to support it. Oxmiq aims to simplify that process by collapsing three distinct components of an AI system into a single intellectual property block it can license to customers. “A licensable core with an open architecture means design teams everywhere can build the custom AI silicon their work needs,” Koduri said.
