Tattvam AI Raises $1.7M to Transform Semiconductor Chip Design with Artificial Intelligence

London-based deeptech startup Tattvam AI has emerged from stealth mode with $1.7 million in pre-seed funding to revolutionize semiconductor chip design using artificial intelligence. The round was led by Seedcamp, with participation from EWOR, Entropy Industrial Ventures, Concept Ventures, and semiconductor industry veteran Stan Boland.

The funding marks a significant milestone for the startup, which is building what it calls the “AI layer” for chip design — aiming to dramatically reduce development timelines that currently take years.

The Race for Custom Silicon

As artificial intelligence models grow more complex, the demand for custom silicon has surged. Unlike general-purpose chips such as GPUs, custom processors are optimized for specific workloads, including AI training, inference, autonomous vehicles, and drug discovery.

Tech giants and startups alike are racing to build application-specific hardware. Google has developed its Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), while Nvidia has partnered with Groq for specialized inference chips. UK startups Fractile and Olix are also pushing into custom processor development.

Custom silicon can deliver up to 100x performance improvements over general-purpose hardware for targeted applications — often with significantly lower power consumption. But designing these chips remains slow, complex, and highly manual.

AI Meets Semiconductor Engineering

Despite rapid progress in AI-powered software development, semiconductor chip design still relies heavily on specialized engineers navigating vast design search spaces with Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools.

Tattvam AI aims to change that.

“Chip design is fundamentally a reasoning problem over an enormous search space,” said Bragadeesh Suresh Babu, CEO and co-founder of Tattvam AI. “We’re building a reasoning model that understands circuits from first principles — the constraints, tradeoffs, and interdependencies — like a world-class engineer, but in a fraction of the time.”

The company’s AI system is designed to autonomously solve complex circuit design tasks, significantly reducing development cycles. Tattvam AI claims it can shrink chip design timelines from the current 2–3 years to just weeks.

Co-founders Lannan Jiang and Bragadeesh Suresh Babu, Tattvam AI

Founder’s Deeptech Pedigree

Bragadeesh, an alumnus of IIT Madras, developed his early interest in mathematics through competitive Olympiad participation before entering the AI and semiconductor spaces. He previously worked at UK brain-monitoring startup CoMind and later joined Fractile as one of its early engineers.

Turning down an offer to join Google’s TPU team, Bragadeesh chose instead to launch Tattvam AI with co-founder Lannan Jiang, who has been developing chips at a research lab at ETH Zurich.

Investor Stan Boland, former CEO of Icera (acquired by Nvidia) and Element 14 (acquired by Broadcom), praised the founding team’s vision. He said Tattvam AI’s approach to accelerating EDA workflows could be embraced by top global semiconductor teams.

Lower Costs, Faster Innovation

The semiconductor industry faces a bottleneck: a limited pool of highly skilled chip designers combined with soaring demand for specialized processors. By automating critical portions of the design process, Tattvam AI aims to democratize access to custom silicon and lower development costs.

The startup plans to launch its first product in the coming months as it partners with companies building next-generation AI hardware.

As AI-driven applications expand across industries, Tattvam AI’s mission could reshape how chips are built — bringing software-like speed to the world of silicon.