SiMa.ai hits $1.45B valuation after $150M Series C as Physical AI chips attract heavyweight investors

SiMa.ai, a San Jose-based startup building specialized chips and software for edge AI applications, has closed a $150M oversubscribed Series C round that values the company at $1.45B post-money. The round was co-led by Fidelity Management & Research Company and Amplify Partners, with a roster of new investors that reads like a who’s-who of institutional capital: AllianceBernstein, Baron Capital, J.P. Morgan, and the State of Michigan. Total capital raised now sits at $500M. The pitch: AI chips that work at the edge, not in the cloud SiMa.ai builds what it calls Machine Learning System-on-Chip platforms, purpose-built silicon designed to run AI workloads not in massive data centers but directly on physical devices. Think humanoid robots processing visual data in real time, autonomous vehicles making split-second navigation decisions, or industrial drones inspecting infrastructure without needing to phone home to a cloud server. Founded in 2018 by Krishna Rangasayee, a semiconductor industry veteran, the company started with a $30M Series A in 2020. Six years and several funding rounds later, it’s raised half a billion dollars and is planning next-generation hardware capable of 1...