The funding event
SiMa.ai, a startup building chips and software for on-device AI, has closed a $150 million Series C at a $1.45 billion valuation. TechCrunch reports the round was co-led by Fidelity Management & Research Company and Amplify, with additional participation from:
- Alter Venture Partners
- Dell Technologies Capital
- StepStone Group
The company has now raised more than $500 million in total. That marks a quick climb: according to PitchBook, SiMa.ai was valued at $960 million after an $85 million Series B in July 2025—a roughly 51% increase in about 14 months.
The pitch: compute that never leaves the device
Founded in 2018 by Krishna Rangasayee, formerly COO of chipmaker Groq, SiMa.ai targets robots, drones, cameras, and other hardware that must process AI without a round trip to a data center. Its chips are designed to be energy-efficient and lower-cost than Nvidia GPUs, with latency low enough for real-world physical tasks. The company frames this as the foundation for "physical AI"—including humanoid robots.
This is not a tiny niche. Nvidia itself is expanding beyond data centers into AI PCs, vehicles, and edge devices, including a $3.5 billion investment in MediaTek tied to its NVLink Fusion ecosystem. SiMa.ai's approach, by contrast, argues that many workloads should never leave the device at all. That inversion—edge-first silicon rather than pulling devices into a data-center standard—is the bet that investors are underwriting.
The edge is becoming the main event
A $1.45 billion valuation for a company selling low-power inference silicon rather than cloud compute is a concrete marker that money is moving toward local execution. SiMa.ai's thesis—that latency-sensitive physical devices cannot afford a cloud round trip—is the same premise that powers on-device AI in handhelds, wearables, and other portable systems. As robotics, industrial automation, and smart cameras ship in volume, specialized low-power challengers may have enough room alongside platform giants.
SiMa.ai , a startup developing chips and software that allow robots, drones, cameras, and other devices to run AI directly on the device, has raised a $150 million Series C at a $1.45 billion valuation. The round was co-led by Fidelity Management & Research Company and Amplify, with participation from Alter Venture Partners, Dell Technologies Capital, and StepStone Group.
Founded in 2018 by Krishna Rangasayee, who was previously the COO of chipmaker Groq, the company provides energy-efficient chips that eliminate the need to send data back and forth to the cloud. SiMa.ai hopes that its low-latency performance and more affordable chips, compared to Nvidia’s GPUs, will help it capture the growing market for physical AI devices, including humanoid robots.
The new round brings SiMa.ai’s total capital raised to over $500 million. The startup was previously valued at $960 million after raising an $85 million Series B in July 2025, according to PitchBook .