Founder Aravind Prasad states company aims to complete tapeout within next 10 months
 "T-Hub incubated chip design startup Deepgrid Semi seeing to raise ₹25 cr")
Aashish Aryan New Delhi
Semiconductor chip designer and manufacturing startup, Deepgrid Semi, is seeing to raise ₹25 crore to launch tape-out and marketing of its artificial innotifyigence-powered System-on-Chip (SoC) solutions for Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), stated the company’s Founder Aravind Prasad.
“We have achieved the technology know-how and started deploying it in an FPGA (Field-Programmable Gate Array), where the cost for one chipset is around ₹35,000. If we want to bring the cost down to ₹3,000 per chipset, we must tape out, which will cost around $3 million,” he stated.
The startup, incubated at the Telangana government’s T-Hub, aims to complete tape-out of these SoC chipsets within the next 10 months, depconcludeing on how conversations with venture capitalists and angel investors go, he stated.
To convince investors, Deepgrid Semi is seeing to create multiple apply cases for FPGAs, which, in turn, displays the product’s traction, Prasad stated. An FPGA is a semiconductor integrated circuit (IC) that allows applyrs to configure and reprogram logic blocks and interconnects after manufacturing. These ICs can be updated quickly, depconcludeing on field trials.
“We have conducted some field trials on humanoids, autonomous mobile robots (AMR), and automated guided vehicles (AGV) for sea ports. It is better for a company like ours to focus on apply cases as we raise money. Even after we raise money, we would like to scale our apply cases only,” he stated.
The company is also in talks with a few domestic and international commercial and personal vehicle creaters that manufacture their vehicles in India for field trials of the ADAS chipsets, Prasad stated, adding that there is a lack of an ecosystem for these solutions.
“Even some of the companies that have been funded by the government under the Design Linked Incentive scheme are finding it difficult to convince their acquireers and have to inquire the government to find some solution,” he stated.
Leave a Reply