Oxmiq Labs, a chip startup founded by veteran graphics engineer Raja Koduri, has raised $35 million to make it cheaper for companies to design their own custom AI chips.
According to SiliconANGLE, the funding is aimed squarely at lowering the design cost of custom AI silicon — the specialized processors that power today's artificial intelligence systems. The report from IndianWeb2 identifies the round as a Series A.
At the center of the company's pitch is a licensable GPU core called OxCore. Rather than building finished chips itself, Oxmiq offers an open GPU architecture that other design teams can license and adapt. IndianWeb2 describes the goal as "empowering design teams worldwide to create custom AI silicon at lower cost."
The approach reflects a broader shift in the chip industry. Designing a modern AI processor from scratch is enormously expensive, which has concentrated the market in the hands of a few large players. By providing a reusable, licensable building block, Oxmiq is betting that more organizations will want to roll their own silicon tuned to their specific AI workloads — without shouldering the full cost of starting from zero.
Koduri is a notable name to be leading that effort, having previously held senior graphics and chip roles at major semiconductor companies, which lends the young venture credibility as it courts customers and talent.
Why it matters: if custom AI chip design becomes cheaper and more accessible, it could loosen the grip of a handful of dominant chipmakers and let more companies build hardware tailored to their own AI needs.