ChipAgents, the agentic AI platform for chip design and verification, has closed an oversubscribed $21 million Series A funding round. The investment brings the company’s total capital raised to $24 million. Bessemer Venture Partners led the round, with strategic backing from Micron, MediaTek, Ericsson, and several other semiconductor companies.

Notable angels also participated, including newly appointed advisors Wally Rhines, Raúl Camposano, and Jack Harding. Existing investors ScOp Venture Capital (Ivan Bercovich) and Amino Capital continued their support. The fresh capital will fuel product development, customer acquisition, and strategic partnerships across the semiconductor industry.

Why AI Matters for Chip Design

Building modern semiconductors remains slow, expensive, and labor-intensive. Engineers work with fragmented toolchains, steep costs, and workflows that haven’t kept up with the increasing complexity of chip designs. ChipAgents aims to change this by bringing AI directly into the design and verification process.

The company’s platform automates routine tasks and introduces AI-native workflows. Engineers can use language-based commands to generate RTL code, create testbenches, debug issues, and verify designs. The goal is to let teams focus on innovation rather than repetitive manual work.

“Electronic design automation (EDA) has powered decades of semiconductor progress, but today’s engineers still struggle with fragmented toolchains, steep costs, and workflows that haven’t kept pace with rapidly growing chip complexity,” said Founder and CEO Professor William Wang. “As designs scale, productivity gains have slowed and verification remains highly manual. Our vision is to change that. With ChipAgents, we’re introducing a unified agentic AI platform designed to automate routine tasks, accelerate design and verification, and enable AI-native workflows that help engineers focus on innovation rather than repetitive effort.”

Scaling Product Development and Market Reach

ChipAgents will use the Series A funds to expand its product capabilities and grow its customer base. The company plans to add more features to its platform, improve integrations with existing EDA tools, and build out its engineering team. Strategic partnerships with semiconductor firms will also be a priority as the company scales.

The platform has already been deployed at 50 leading semiconductor companies. Internal testing shows that independent teams achieve 80% higher productivity in verification compared to standard industry practices. ChipAgents is betting that these early results will translate into broader adoption as more companies look for ways to speed up design cycles and reduce costs.

From Research Lab to Commercial Traction

Professor William Wang founded ChipAgents to bridge the gap between academic AI research and real-world semiconductor development. The company started with a focus on automating the most time-consuming parts of chip design, such as verification and debugging. Since its seed round, ChipAgents has seen usage surge by more than 6,000% in the first half of 2025.

Revenue growth has been equally strong. The company reported 50x year-over-year growth in annual recurring revenue at the start of its second year. This traction caught the attention of both venture investors and strategic players in the semiconductor space, leading to an oversubscribed Series A round.

ChipAgents has now assembled a team of AI researchers and hardware design experts. The company continues to refine its platform based on feedback from early customers, with a focus on making the tools easy to integrate into existing workflows.

Former Industry Leaders Join Advisory Board

ChipAgents strengthened its leadership by forming an advisory board packed with semiconductor veterans. The board includes Wally Rhines, former CEO of Mentor Graphics (now Siemens EDA); Raúl Camposano, former CTO of Synopsys; Jack Harding, former CEO of Cadence; and Erez Tsur, former CEO of Cadence Israel. Dr. John Bowers, a founding advisor, continues to provide guidance.

These advisors bring decades of experience building and scaling the companies that define the EDA industry. Their involvement signals confidence in ChipAgents’ approach and provides the startup with deep industry knowledge as it grows.

“ChipAgents demonstrates the major impact that AI can have on the full range of integrated circuit design tasks,” said Wally Rhines. “I’ve met with three major semiconductor companies that have done competitive assessments of AI-based design solutions, and ChipAgents is the number one choice at all three.”

“ChipAgents is pioneering a new era in semiconductor design, where AI and engineering expertise converge for smarter solutions. The implications for the semiconductor industry are nothing short of transformative, and I’m excited to support their mission,” said Raúl Camposano.

Why Investors Backed ChipAgents

Bessemer Venture Partners sees ChipAgents as the best product in the market for AI-powered RTL design, debugging, and verification. The firm was impressed by the company’s technical depth and its ability to integrate across the entire chip design workflow, from spec ingestion to waveform analysis.

“ChipAgents has demonstrated itself as having the best product in the market that does AI-powered RTL design, debugging, and verification for chip developers,” said Lance Co Ting Keh, Venture Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. “We’re impressed by Professor William Wang’s deep technical expertise and the exceptional team of AI and hardware design experts he’s assembled. ChipAgents’ agentic approach to AI chip design integrates seamlessly across the entire chip design workflow, bringing together disparate EDA tools from spec ingestion to waveform analysis, which we believe is the right way to tackle this complex, multi-step process. The feedback from customers and technical experts validates that ChipAgents isn’t just automating individual tasks, but creating a true force multiplier for hardware design engineers.”

Micron Ventures, the strategic arm of memory and storage manufacturer Micron Technology, joined the round because of its focus on AI-driven chip design solutions. As demand for AI hardware accelerates, chipmakers need faster and more intelligent design tools to keep up.

“Micron Ventures supports bold AI companies led by visionary founders developing transformative technologies. ChipAgents’ mission to reinvent chip design through AI agents aligns closely with our focus, especially as chipmakers require faster, more intelligent design solutions to meet the accelerating demands of AI hardware. At this pivotal inflection point, ChipAgents presents a high-impact opportunity to invest in the future of semiconductor development,” said Henry Huang, Investment Director at Micron Ventures.

MediaTek, Ericsson, and other semiconductor companies also contributed strategic capital, reflecting the industry’s interest in AI-powered design automation. The participation of both financial and strategic investors gives ChipAgents access to capital, industry expertise, and potential distribution channels.

Origianl Creator: Ekaterina Pisareva
Original Link: https://justainews.com/companies/funding-news/chipagents-raises-21m-series-a-for-ai-chip-design/
Originally Posted: Tue, 21 Oct 2025 15:09:52 +0000