Fidelity and Amplify back SiMa.ai’s $150M raise to power humanoids, drones, and cars without Nvidia
Tech Funding News Abhinaya Prabhu
SiMa.ai raised $150M at a $1.45B valuation to sell AI chips for robots, drones, and cars. It’s betting Nvidia users will switch now, even though its next chip isn’t due until 2028.
Based on reporting by Tech Funding News, Abhinaya Prabhu — read the original for the full story.
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SiMa.ai just pulled in $150 million in a Series C that values the company at $1.45 billion. Fidelity Management & Research Company and Amplify led the oversubscribed round, with Alter Venture Partners, Dell Technologies Capital, Maverick Capital, +ND Capital, Point72, and StepStone Group also joining. AllianceBernstein, Baron Capital, J.P. Morgan, and the State of Michigan came in as new investors. Total funding now stands at $500 million, according to the company.
The pitch is simple, and pretty pointed: SiMa.ai wants to be the chip-and-software stack for machines that have to run AI locally, inside drones, robots, and cars, where power and heat are tight. That puts it on a collision course with Nvidia, whose Jetson hardware is already shipping. SiMa.ai says revenue quadrupled from 2024 to 2025, though it didn’t give the actual numbers.
The company’s current chip, Modalix, is already in production on TSMC’s 6-nanometre process. It is paired with Palette Neat, an open-source software environment SiMa.ai launched on June 16 for what it calls physical AI. The idea is to have developers describe their data and constraints on speed, delay, power, and accuracy, then let the software build the application. SiMa.ai says that cuts deployment from months to days or hours.
Rangasayee is also selling ease of switching. He says SiMa.ai’s module is pin-compatible with Nvidia’s, and that code written for Nvidia’s tools can be ported over. For drone makers, the company is even offering a live port during the sales meeting. The main target is Nvidia’s Jetson Orin family, which SiMa.ai claims it can beat on performance and power.
But the real story is the timing gap. SiMa.ai says its next hardware won’t arrive until the first half of 2028, and that it will be offered as licensable machine-learning designs, chiplets, and full systems on a chip with 1,000 dense TOPS. Nvidia’s Jetson Thor is already on sale. So this is a funding round built on belief: that physical AI is the next battleground, and that customers will bet on the promise before the next chip exists.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
This is classic AI hardware theater: a big valuation, a clean narrative, and a product roadmap with a very polite gap in it. The open-source software helps, but investors are still being asked to pay now for a 2028 chip and a lot of confidence. That’s not a moat; that’s a calendar.
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