Artificial intelligence (AI) is helping early-stage semiconductor startups in India design chips faster, reduce costs, and work with smaller teams, making it easier for them to compete with large global technology companies.
Startups like Netrasemi, backed by Zoho, are using AI to speed up chip development. The company has cut the time needed to create testing scripts after chip design from one week to just two–three hours. These scripts are used during the testing phase to check chip performance.
Similarly, Mindgrove Technologies is using AI to quickly read and understand long technical documents that often run into hundreds of pages, saving significant time in documentation, which is a critical part of chip design.
Industry experts say AI can help startups reduce overall chip design cycles by three to four months. Chip design usually takes years and requires large teams and heavy investment—something big companies like Google and Qualcomm can afford, but startups struggle with. AI is now lowering these barriers.
Agnit Semiconductors, which develops chips for fast-charging applications, said AI can also reduce team sizes. A project that earlier needed 100 engineers may now need only around 70. Another startup, Maieutic Semiconductors, said it has already saved 20–25% of its design time using AI.
Many startups are using AI tools built into software from global chip design companies like Cadence and Synopsys, which have added machine learning features to speed up design work.
This trend aligns with the Indian government’s push to support the semiconductor sector. Under the India Semiconductor Mission, launched in 2021 with a budget of ₹76,000 crore, the government has approved incentives for several chip startups.
Despite the benefits, challenges remain. Manufacturing chips is expensive—producing a chip at a foundry can cost around $3 million, and reaching production quality may need $20 million or more. Limited availability of chip design data and concerns about protecting intellectual property while using AI tools are also major issues.
Even so, founders say AI has made chip startups more efficient and cost-effective, giving them a better chance to compete in a traditionally expensive and slow-moving industry.
