SiMa.ai, a San Jose, California company that makes chips and software for running AI on robots, drones and vehicles, said on 28 September 2026 that it had raised $150m in a Series C round at a valuation of $1.45bn.
Fidelity Management & Research Company and Amplify co-led the round, which the company described as oversubscribed. Alter Venture Partners, Dell Technologies Capital, Maverick Capital, +ND Capital, Point72 and StepStone Group also took part. AllianceBernstein, Baron Capital, J.P. Morgan and the State of Michigan joined as new investors.
The round brought SiMa.ai's total funding to $500m.
“While others are still figuring out the pieces or repurposing their cloud offerings, we’ve built the entire puzzle.”Krishna Rangasayee, Founder and CEO, SiMa.ai
What SiMa.ai does
SiMa.ai sells what it calls a physical AI platform: purpose-built silicon combined with software for deploying AI models on devices at the edge rather than in the cloud. Its chips are pitched as a cheaper, lower-power alternative to Nvidia's GPUs for this kind of work, according to The Next Web. The company's software environment, Palette Neat, is designed to help developers bring models onto its hardware, and the company says it cuts deployment times from months to days or hours.
The company was founded in 2018 by chief executive Krishna Rangasayee, who was previously chief operating officer at the chipmaker Groq, according to The Next Web, citing TechCrunch. It did not disclose its headcount.
SiMa.ai said its revenue growth quadrupled year on year between 2024 and 2025 and that revenue continued to rise in 2026, but it did not give revenue figures. Customers and partners named in the announcement include Bosch, Emerson, Intrinsic, Kontron, L&T Technology Services, Micron, Synopsys and TRUMPF.
What the money is for
The company said the money would be used to scale Palette Neat and to fund its next generation of hardware, which it plans to release in the first half of 2028. It said that hardware would deliver 1,000 dense TOPS of compute and would include machine learning IP, chiplets and systems-on-chip.
SiMa.ai also plans to push further into medium and high-end drones, humanoid robots, advanced driver assistance systems and AI-powered car cockpits, and to expand internationally. It cited a Counterpoint Research forecast that cumulative shipments of physical AI devices would reach 145 million units by 2035.
Mike Dauber, a general partner at Amplify Partners, said in the announcement that the firm had backed SiMa.ai from its first round. Scott Darling, president of Dell Technologies Capital, called the company a critical silicon provider for distributed physical AI.
The funding so far
In April 2024 SiMa.ai raised $70m in a round led by Maverick Capital, with Point72 and Jericho participating alongside existing investors including Amplify Partners and Dell Technologies Capital, according to Latham & Watkins, which advised Maverick. That took its total to $270m.
In August 2025 it raised $85m in a round also led by Maverick Capital, with StepStone Group joining, which brought total funding to $355m, according to Pulse 2. The Next Web, citing TechCrunch and PitchBook data, described that round as a Series B at a $960m valuation. The new round lifts the valuation by about half from that reported figure.
Company website: sima.ai