SiMa.ai raises $150M at $1.45B valuation to expand physical AI chip platform
SiMa.ai raised $150M at a $1.45B valuation to scale its physical AI platform and next-generation chips.
The company defines physical AI devices as hardware systems that combine AI with sensors and actuators to reason about and act in the real world, including robots, drones and autonomous vehicles. SiMa.ai is building hardware and software intended to serve as the “brains” for those machines.
Founder and CEO Krishna Rangasayee said physical AI in humanoids, automotive and drones is the gateway to a $50 trillion market that has remained largely untouched by modern innovation. He said SiMa.ai has built the entire puzzle while others are still assembling pieces or repurposing cloud offerings.
Rangasayee said the funding would help catapult SiMa.ai into a dominant position by giving it resources to scale its purpose-built platform and compete with Nvidia Corp., which produces more expensive CUDA-based hardware. The capital will fund scaling Palette Neat, described as the company’s industry-first agentic development environment for physical AI, and building the next generation of its system-on-chip, Modalix, for embedded robotics. SiMa.ai said it aims to deliver 1,000 tera operations per second with the new hardware in the first half of 2028.
Nvidia’s highest-end modules, the Jetson AGX Thor series, reach 2,000 FP4 TOPS and are designed for full-scale humanoid robots and complex autonomous machines, according to SiliconANGLE. Mainstream robotic and heavy drone modules such as Jetson T2000 and T3000 cover around 400 and 865 TOPS for mid-tier robotic arms and heavy delivery drones, maintaining a lower power tier to preserve battery life. Nvidia’s CUDA-based architecture dominates physical AI software but is also among the most complex and power-hungry. SiMa.ai seeks to offer a lower-power alternative that includes custom-built silicon and software support that can be deployed in days or hours.
The company said the next-generation hardware will let it expand into medium- to high-end drones, humanoid robotics, automotive advanced driver assistance systems and AI-powered cockpits. Current customers and partners include ARK Electronics LLC, AverMedia Technologies Inc., Robert Bosch GmbH, Emerson Electric Co., Micron Technology Co. and Synopsys Inc.
Editor's Summary
SiMa.ai raised $150 million in a Series C round at a $1.45 billion valuation, with Fidelity and Amplify co-leading and Dell Technologies Capital, J.P. Morgan and others participating. The startup plans to scale its Palette Neat development environment and build its next-generation Modalix chip for embedded robotics, targeting 1,000 tera operations per second in the first half of 2028 as it challenges Nvidia’s CUDA-based hardware in physical AI. Its customers and partners include Bosch, Micron and Synopsys.