What is Artificial Chip Intelligence ACI™?
ACI is a type of artificial intelligence that understands, learns, and applies knowledge across a wide range of chip design tasks, with designer-like cognitive abilities. At its core lie Cognichip’s physics-informed foundation models — purpose-built for chip design and trained on the industry’s largest dataset under governance for unparalleled accuracy, convergence, and cost-efficiency.
Physics-informed foundation models
Have you tried asking an LLM to calculate circuit delay? It’s no secret — general-purpose LLMs lack the training to effectively understand chip design problems.
This is why at Cognichip we designed a new breed of models, grounded in semiconductor physics. We assembled the industry’s largest training dataset under governance — developed by engineers who have collectively shipped hundreds of chips and AI scientists who have fundamentally rethought training pipelines.
Because design logic is built into the models themselves, rather than hand-crafted into agentic wrappers, ACI offers unparalleled accuracy, convergence, and efficiency.
What is ACI Enterprise?
ACI Enterprise is the semiconductor industry’s first AI-native design system — a full-stack intelligence infrastructure that enables engineers to move from idea to working designs with AI-native workflows, bringing software-like speed and scalability to hardware development.
Complete intelligence infrastructure
With Cognichip’s physics-informed models at its core, ACI Enterprise delivers a bleeding-edge AI technology stack that operates both above and below the models.
Workflows, agent framework, context and memory, compute & inference, and proprietary data combine into end-to-end intelligence — a self-learning flywheel. ACI applies the right intelligence density to the right task, giving organizations native control over data residency, deployment, customization, and cost.
“The model is the foundation. The loop is the company.”
— Navin Chandra, Managing Director, Mayfield
Above the model
Living specs, RTL, tests & constraints — no manual handoffs
Orchestrates the tools and tasks around the model
Physics-informed foundation models
“The Model is the Design”
Below the model
Persistent project context that evolves with the design
Scalable training and inference infrastructure
The industry’s largest chip-design dataset
The stack
Layered, top to bottom
The loop
A self-learning flywheel
AI-native workflows
Cognichip ACI reimagines workflows for the AI-native design environment. Traditional chip design flows and agentic wrappers rely on repetitive tool runs and manual data handoffs, making it impossible to maintain context as a project evolves. ACI brings specifications, RTL, tests, constraints, and performance together in a living, evolving model — a connective tissue across design abstractions.
Architectural exploration
Formalized spec as the single source of truth — the connective tissue of the design.
Separate artifact. No paper trail or cross-reference; forgetful across a large design.
RTL design
Emitted, not generated. Formally connected to all design artifacts (constraints, UPF).
Treats RTL as code, not design. No formal verification, LINT, or elaboration.
Verification & debug
Intelligence-driven, spec-aligned testplan. Drives to 100% coverage; UVM-compliant; native root-cause analysis.
Constrained-random only. No native design verification or UVM compliance.
PPA optimization
PPA analysis baked into the model; physics-grounded optimization (re-pipelining, clock gating).
No understanding of circuits or PPA. Under 20% accuracy on PPA benchmarks.
Pareto awareness
Continuously pushes the Pareto frontier outward — recentering PPA without breaking functionality.
Requires synthesis in the loop. No design Pareto analysis, recentering, or equivalence testing.
System integration
Native FPGA and ASIC flows.
No integration capabilities.
Built for the global enterprise
ACI Enterprise is architected from the ground up for the modern design environment, with enterprise-grade security and compliance across a range of managed and self-hosted deployment environments.
Zero-Trust IP Protection
Enterprise design “alpha” — the proprietary architectural intuition that gives a chipmaker its competitive edge — stays strictly inside the customer’s firewall, never passing into third-party training pipelines.
Enterprise-Grade Compliance & Assurance
Validated by an independent SOC 2 Type II examination, with continuous control monitoring and zero-trust access controls (SSO/MFA) that satisfy rigorous enterprise audit standards.
Granular Client-Side Sovereignty
Empowers engineering teams to restrict data visibility with hardened multi-tenant separation by default, plus continuous workload monitoring.
Built for all semiconductor workflows
ACI supports every stage of the chip design lifecycle, from modifying existing designs to creating, verifying, optimizing, and emulating new ones.
“Semiconductor design cycles have steadily lengthened over the past several decades, creating a major productivity bottleneck for the industry.”
— Umesh Padval, Managing Partner, Seligman Ventures
Backed by $93M from Seligman, SBI, Mayfield, Lux Capital, and Candou Ventures
Ready to transform your chip design workflow?
See how ACI collapses months of engineering iteration into hours.
Backed by $93M from Seligman, SBI, Mayfield, Lux Capital, and Candou Ventures