Physical AI is having its moment. Not in the “sci-fi hologram” way, in the “your industrial robot just got 10x smarter without burning down the power budget” way. And at the center of it sits SiMa.ai, where Founder and CEO Krishna Rangasayee is turning the embedded edge market from a decades-old rotary phone into a streaming-era supercomputer. Today, they locked in an $85 million Series B extension led by Maverick Capital, with StepStone Group joining the party and the heavy-hitter roster of existing investors doubling down. That brings total funding to $355 million since 2018. That is not momentum. That is market gravity.
SiMa.ai saw the trillion-dollar embedded edge running on stale silicon and decided to swap it for an MLSoC platform that thinks in real time. It is software-first, power-obsessed, and industry-agnostic, driving robotics, autonomous vehicles, industrial automation, aerospace, defense, healthcare, and smart vision without demanding a forklift upgrade to your hardware. The Modalix second-generation MLSoC line runs from 25 to 200 TOPS, pairs with the Palette software suite (including the no-code Edgematic), and plays nice with every major ML framework. CNNs, transformers, LLMs, generative AI, all processed where the action is, not in a distant data center.
This round is fuel for expansion: deeper footprints in Japan, Korea, and Europe through partners like Macnica TecStar, scaling engineering muscle in Bengaluru and San Jose, and sharpening their automotive roadmap with Harald Kroeger steering the dedicated business unit. The TRUMPF partnership brings AI into laser systems, Cisco blends Modalix into industrial edge gear, and Synopsys accelerates automotive AI. With over 50 global customers already in play, SiMa.ai is not pitching theory, they are shipping product that’s winning benchmarks and awards, from Forbes’ Best Startup Employers to Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies.
Krishna Rangasayee has assembled a leadership crew that reads like a semiconductor All-Star team: Elizabeth Samara-Rubio driving global business, Gopal Hegde running engineering and operations, Azfar Hasib shaping culture, and a board stacked with operators like Moshe Gavrielov and Lip-Bu Tan. They are scaling into a market that needs exactly what they are building, and they have the capital, the team, and the customers to make it happen.
