Integrated circuit design

I don't know, a little bit of chicken and the egg, right? The classic conundrum.

Going back to talking about this question of the expense of fabs and ramp up, is there a distinction that you make between the ramp up of a new fab entirely? And then are there different decisions that need to be made when you're thinking about the ramp up of a new chip design? Because obviously that's maybe a similar process, but different than building a facility.

Yeah, sure.

I think this is completely different, but also somehow interlinks.

If there is a new chip design, how are you integrating that also then in your fab, so to say? I think that's something which is somehow also connected to a certain extent that you make sure also production processes are fitting then also the needs of the design you're having.

I mean, that's also where you say, for example, if you don't, have your own fabrication and you give basically the design also to the foundry that they produce it in a way for you.

And that means also certain adaptation time to make sure that you get basically the yield and the output you need.

At Zoxmic, we all come from the same DNA, performance DNA, for a different workload than the computer graphics by play.

Yeah, I'm kind of curious when you think about how chip design was for your entire career versus how it's changed now that you have access to cloud code and these other tools, like what are the concrete differences? Is it just everything's the same, but we can do it much, much faster? Are there certain things that you can completely outsource? You know, how do you think about that trade off? And by outsource, I mean to the model.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, we are still in very early days of learning how to use this, you know, incredibly capable tool right so I will preface that our learning so far has been this okay my even personal learning is that you're as human right as an engineer and as like you know architects and team our ability to describe what it is that I want Right.

The use of AI and sort of whether it's the tool or it can do the actual job itself has been, I think, not as big of a discussion in the chip industry, but it has been in some other things.

So some areas like law and coding where maybe people are worried that AI can do the entire job and not just become a tool in the hands of someone doing the job.

So we saw Kimi K3 when they came out, they did a sort of a small chip design, but entirely autonomously using their model.

And I think you called it, what was the quote? Compressive.

Germany and the Netherlands are investing 40 million euros to revolutionize AI chip design.

The National Agency for Disruptive Innovation and Germany's Federal Agency for Breakthrough Innovation are backing small teams to speed up chip development cycles.

This initiative aims to cut design times from years to weeks, enhancing Europe's semiconductor capabilities and reducing reliance on US and China.

And it circles back to how the chips even get designed to begin with, which takes us to a final story out of India.

yes dbcon india 2026 just concluded in bengaluru the overarching theme is that we are moving past quote predictive ai end quote in chip design and entering the era of quote-unquote agentic ai we aren't just using ai to suggest a line of code anymore companies are deploying autonomous ai agents that handle the heavy lifting of multi-die integration and verification

How is that translating commercially?

Well, let's look at Cadence as a prime example.

And that's where I see as a very, as a significant untapped area.

So I see a lot of the chip design ecosystem rallying around that, running around that market where, you know, you have this product that didn't exist before, you know, and they're just localized.

The culture, the local culture is embedded.

I look at China as an example.

there's an opportunity for them to be able to tap into that market, right? And that's what we're trying to do.

So what you said about what's another key point? I think that the market, and again, that's not something that, even when we have chip and web design centers across the entire market, it's still not nearly enough.

Because when you look at any of the, you know, the key ecosystems or even, you know, in microchip design, it's not just one company.

You have hundreds, hundreds of companies.

[laughs]

Uh, this one, you know, bes- in addition to, uh, you know, the, the excitement around software tools and talking to my younger colleagues, a lot of excitement about using AI for hardware design, and so this question is: What will the next chip design software look like? Will they be radically different from what we have used for the last thirty years? This seems like a...

to set one of you...

Both of you must have an opinion on this.

[laughs]

Yeah, so I think chip design software is gonna be an LLM that you talk to, and, uh, say, "I want-"

Okay.

That's a-

And here's a newsflash for you Hobbit and Lord of the Rings fans.

Falcom, an Atlanta-based fabulous semiconductor company that develops RF technologies for satellite and other communication systems, is using artificial intelligence to significantly accelerate the chip design process.

The company recently showcased Gandalf.

its new AI-powered chip design platform.

The conventional chip development can require months of engineering effort, specialized technical expertise, substantial capital, and lengthy design cycles.

With Gandalf, the company claims this cycle can be reduced to 90 seconds.

That's crazy.

But if it's true, it'll turn the GAN chip design on its head.

So to start us off, you know, tell us a little something interesting about your journey as a serial entrepreneur so we can get to know you a little better.

Sure.

I started my career as a chip designer.

And very quickly, I fell in love with love, love with software and also software to help engineers to get their product to the market faster, better, cheaper.

And I have done my career working with companies who build electronic design, medical devices, even oil and gas.