Funding will accelerate development of its agentic AI platform, scaling automation and efficiency across next-generation semiconductor design.
ChipAgents, an emerging force in the application of agentic artificial intelligence to semiconductor design, has secured an oversubscribed $50 million Series A1 funding round, bringing the company’s total capital raised to $74 million. The round was led by Matter Venture Partners, a hard-tech venture capital firm backed by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), with continued participation from existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners, Micron, MediaTek, and Ericsson. The investment underscores growing industry confidence in the role of AI-driven automation in addressing the escalating complexity and talent constraints within the global semiconductor ecosystem.
As part of the transaction, Wen Hsieh, Founding Managing Partner of Matter Venture Partners, will join the ChipAgents Board of Directors. Hsieh brings more than two decades of experience across semiconductor design, manufacturing, and venture investment, along with deep relationships across the global chip supply chain. His addition reflects both strategic alignment and the increasing importance of investor-operator perspectives in shaping the next generation of chip design infrastructure.
Accelerating an AI-Native Approach to Chip Design
The fresh capital will be used to scale ChipAgents’ agentic AI platform, expand its engineering and research teams, and accelerate global deployment of its multi-agent chip design environment. The company is building what it describes as an AI-powered working system for semiconductor development—one that integrates planning, reasoning, execution, verification, and continuous optimization into a unified, collaborative AI framework.
Rather than positioning its software as a conventional “copilot” or productivity assistant, ChipAgents is developing autonomous, task-oriented agents designed to function as full participants in the chip development lifecycle. These agents can interpret technical specifications, decompose complex design objectives, collaborate with other agents, implement solutions, validate outcomes, and iteratively refine results. The company believes this approach represents a structural shift from tool-centric workflows to execution-centric AI systems capable of driving measurable results.
William Wang, founder and chief executive officer of ChipAgents, emphasized that the company’s vision is not limited to incremental gains in productivity. Instead, he described the platform as a new form of workforce for the semiconductor industry—one that blends human expertise with high-intensity, AI-driven execution capabilities. According to Wang, the company’s multi-agent teams operate as responsible executors rather than passive assistants, enabling faster iteration cycles and deeper analysis across complex design environments.
Wang also pointed to the growing talent gap in semiconductor engineering as a key motivator for the company’s approach. As chip complexity continues to rise, experienced design and verification engineers are becoming increasingly scarce. ChipAgents aims to enable smaller integrated circuit (IC) design teams to achieve the collaborative throughput of much larger organizations, while preserving the agility and efficiency typically associated with startups. The company’s long-term mission is to make AI-driven chip innovation the default operating model for silicon design, construction, and delivery.
Strategic Alignment with Industry Ecosystem Leaders
The participation of Matter Venture Partners provides ChipAgents with more than financial backing. As a venture firm deeply embedded in the semiconductor ecosystem, Matter brings strategic connections across fabrication, design, and advanced manufacturing. This alignment is expected to accelerate ChipAgents’ integration into the broader industry value chain.
Today, a small number of leading wafer foundries account for the vast majority of advanced-node manufacturing capacity. In this environment, companies that can closely align with ecosystem partners—spanning design tools, manufacturing, and packaging—gain a strategic advantage. By partnering with investors who have strong relationships throughout this network, ChipAgents is positioning itself at a pivotal point of structural transformation in the semiconductor industry.
Wen Hsieh noted that the primary bottlenecks in chip design productivity have shifted in recent years. While traditional electronic design automation (EDA) tools have become increasingly powerful, the constraints now lie in the availability of highly specialized talent, the capacity of engineering teams, and the speed at which designs can be iterated and validated. He described ChipAgents’ agentic AI platform as a direct response to these challenges, enabling scalable engineering output even as manufacturing capabilities continue to advance.
Hsieh also highlighted the growing demand for more complex and higher-performance silicon across AI and high-performance computing markets. In this context, he argued that companies seeking to lead the next generation of computing will increasingly rely on foundational platforms like ChipAgents to accelerate design cycles and manage complexity.
Strong Market Traction and Commercial Momentum
ChipAgents’ Series A1 round follows closely on the heels of its earlier Series A financing, completed just a few months prior. During that period, the company reports significant commercial progress, including a 140-fold year-over-year increase in annual recurring revenue (ARR).
The company has expanded its platform deployment to 80 leading semiconductor firms worldwide, securing multiple multi-year, multi-million-dollar licensing agreements. These contracts signal both strong customer retention and growing confidence in the platform’s ability to deliver measurable productivity gains.
Internally, the company has scaled rapidly. Its team grew from just 10 employees to 46 within a short timeframe, reflecting the increasing demand for its technology. ChipAgents also relocated its headquarters from Santa Barbara to a new facility in Santa Clara, placing it at the center of the global semiconductor industry and closer to major customers, partners, and talent pools.
In production-level Tier-1 semiconductor projects, the company reports significant improvements across several key performance metrics:
- Specification reading and comprehension efficiency increased by 15 times
- Formal assertion generation time reduced by 240 times
- Achieved 100% code and functional coverage through formal verification
- UVM validation environment generation speed increased by 400 times
These improvements translate directly into shorter verification cycles, greater transparency across the design process, and more predictable execution of complex digital IC projects. By accelerating the path to tape-out, the platform aims to deliver higher-quality chips in shorter timeframes, while reducing engineering overhead and risk.
Strengthening the Advisory Board with Industry Veterans
Alongside its funding announcement, ChipAgents revealed the addition of Sandeep Bharathi, President of Marvell’s Data Center Group, to its advisory board. Bharathi brings more than 20 years of leadership experience in hyperscale cloud and enterprise infrastructure chip development, with a track record of guiding complex system-on-chip (SoC) projects from early design through mass production.
His expertise is expected to provide valuable guidance as ChipAgents scales its platform and expands into larger, more complex semiconductor programs. Bharathi emphasized that as cloud and enterprise systems grow in scale and sophistication, the industry must rethink how engineering teams are empowered. He described ChipAgents’ approach as an important exploration into how AI can reshape design and verification workflows.
With Bharathi’s appointment, the company’s advisory board now includes a roster of prominent semiconductor industry figures:
- Wally Rhines, former CEO of Mentor Graphics
- Raúl Camposano, former CTO of Synopsys
- Jack Harding, former CEO of Cadence
- John Bowers, a pioneer in electrical engineering
- Erez Tsur, former CEO of Cadence Israel
This lineup reflects deep expertise across EDA, chip design, and semiconductor manufacturing, providing strategic insight as the company navigates its next growth phase.
Company Overview and Vision
Founded in 2024, ChipAgents is focused on building an agentic AI platform that transforms technical specifications and source code into production-ready register-transfer level (RTL) designs, verification assets, and automated root-cause analyses. By embedding autonomous planning and execution capabilities directly into semiconductor workflows, the company aims to significantly reduce the time and cost associated with chip design and verification.
Its platform is designed to support design engineers, verification engineers, and embedded systems teams at leading semiconductor companies. By automating large portions of the design and validation process, ChipAgents seeks to free human engineers to focus on higher-level architecture, innovation, and system-level optimization.
About Matter Venture Partners
Matter Venture Partners is a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm focused on hard-technology investments across semiconductors, electronics, and physical AI. Backed by deep industry experience and a global strategic network, the firm aims to support startups developing breakthrough technologies with the potential to reshape industrial and computing landscapes.
By combining long-term capital with technical expertise and ecosystem connections, Matter Venture Partners positions itself as a strategic partner for companies building foundational technologies in high-impact sectors.
A Turning Point for AI-Driven Semiconductor Design
ChipAgents’ oversubscribed funding round reflects broader industry trends. As semiconductor complexity continues to rise—driven by AI workloads, advanced packaging, and heterogeneous computing—traditional engineering workflows are being stretched to their limits. At the same time, the global shortage of experienced chip designers is becoming a structural constraint.
Agentic AI platforms like the one being developed by ChipAgents represent a potential inflection point. By transforming AI from a passive assistant into an active engineering participant, these systems aim to compress development cycles, reduce costs, and unlock new levels of innovation.
With strong investor backing, rapid commercial adoption, and a growing advisory board of industry veterans, ChipAgents is positioning itself at the forefront of this transformation. If its technology delivers on its promises, the company could play a central role in shaping how the next generation of silicon is designed, verified, and brought to market.
