Kerala start-up unveils first artificial intelligence system on a chip

Jyothis Indirabhai, Co-Founder CEO of Netrasemi, with the company’s newly launched A2000 AI chip. | Photo credit: Special arrangement

Thiruvananthapuram-based semiconductor startup Netrasemi has announced the launch of its flagship AI system-on-chip (SoC), the A2000. The company said the chip has successfully completed silicon fabrication, a critical phase of laboratory testing, and is ready for commercial production at the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company in Taiwan next year.

Founded in 2020, Netrasemi is a “fables” company that designs and sells semiconductor chips, outsourcing their production to specialized facilities.

The A2000 AI chip targets applications such as smart surveillance cameras, edge AI boxes and smart video gateways. The company said on Friday (May 29, 2026) that the chip will enter mass production in 2027 and is expected to help global platform developers bring advanced artificial intelligence algorithms to small edge devices.

The A2000 is one of India’s first AI/ML chips and features an internal neural processor (NPU), video cores (VPU), video signal processor (ISP), cryptographic engines and other Netrasemi hardware acceleration IP cores. It also includes the company’s proprietary heterogeneous parallel graph processing architecture. The chip design will be shared with selected OEMs for collaborative R&D aimed at developing additional commercial use cases.

“Our SoCs go beyond conventional AI/ML integration by combining proprietary hardware-accelerated IP with domain-specific optimization tailored for high-performance, real-time edge AI. The architecture is specifically designed for compact, power- and cost-sensitive edge devices. We are currently working with several leading OEMs to facilitate early sample evaluation, co-development and advanced R&harabi initiatives,” said Indithis R&CEO Don’t shake, he said.

The company acknowledged that central government’s Semiconductor Design Linked Incentive (DLI) and Design Infrastructure Support (DIS) programs under MeitY played a key role in achieving the milestone. Netrasemi was among the first startups selected by MeitY for ₹15 crore to support DLI in 2023. The company has so far raised ₹125 crore in funding from investors including ZOHO and Unicorn India Ventures.

When asked about the importance of the startup for the Kerala start-up ecosystem, Mr. Indirabhai called it an “opportunity to promote the manufacture of domestic products”.

“It is extremely important that Indian companies making products such as cameras, robots and low-cost IoT devices get early access to smart and cost-effective chips to develop their products faster. The Indian ecosystem is better suited for product development; however, startups and governments often focus on the service sector,” he said.

Mr. Indirabhai also urged Kerala-based startups to partner with Netras.

Netrasemi, in collaboration with the College of Engineering, Trivandrum (CET), has developed another SoC chip, the R1000 AI/ML MCU, for the IoT sensor market with the support of MeitY’s Chip-to-Startup (C2S) program. The company is also developing a high-end MeitY-enabled A4000 AI server chip that should be ready for production by the second quarter of 2027.

Published – 30 May 2026 01:19 IST