Rapid Silicon announces seed funding of $15m

Rapid Silicon, a provider of AI-enabled application-specific FPGAs based on open-source technology, has raised $15 million in seed funding led by ChengWei Capital and Cambium Capital.

Headed by industry veteran Dr. Naveed Sherwani, Rapid Silicon has offices in San Jose and Shanghai and has plans to expand with additional offices in Europe and Asia.

“Today’s customer demand for simple-to-use and efficient FPGAs from independent suppliers is driven by increasing market consolidation and the rise of domain-specific architectures,” said Dr. Naveed Sherwani, Chairman, President, and CEO of Rapid Silicon. “We see an opportunity to become a leading independent supplier of FPGAs. We are building our solution on top of open source FPGA technology using proprietary AI methodologies to meet the growing demand for diverse target applications.”

As a founding member of the Open Source FPGA Foundation, Rapid Silicon has adopted the foundation’s open source tools and methodologies to allow for innovation on a global scale. The company’s new generation of FPGAs targets a wide range of applications allowing customers to introduce differentiated products.