IC spinoff Kandou AI raises $225M for faster AI infrastructure
© 2026 Kandou AI
Kandou AI aims to democratize access to artificial intelligence with its high-speed, energy efficient connectivity and system solutions – groundbreaking technology to build affordable, scalable and energy efficient AI systems worldwide.
Started in 2011 at EPFL as Kandou Bus, Kandou AI is a semiconductor design company dedicated to advancing high-speed, longer reach, low power connectivity solutions. It builds high-performance connectivity products for its customers across datacenter infrastructure, AI, and consumer electronics.
With the exponential growth of AI models, GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) and CPUs (Central Processing Units) need an ever-increasing amount of memory, which has become a major bottleneck. Traditional technologies, which were designed for a pre-AI world have not been able to keep up. Kandou AI’s silicon interconnect technology addresses this challenge.
The company’s strength comes from combining information theory with semiconductor design. Its patented signaling and SerDes (serializer/deserializer) technologies change how data travels through copper connections, improving speed, distance, and energy efficiency while reducing costs.
“AI has led to massive demand in communication bandwidth between chips, so this is now the time for our technology to shine,” says Kandou AI’s co-founder Amin Shokrollahi, a professor emeritus at the EPFL School of Computer and Communication Sciences and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at the company.
The $225M (around 180M CHF) was raised during an oversubscribed Series-A funding round, meaning that Kandou AI raised more money that it was asking for. The investments were led by Maverick Silicon with strategic participation from SoftBank, Alchip Technologies Limited, Synopsys, and Cadence Design Systems. The latter two companies are in fact competitors. Several existing investors also participated in the financing round.
“This is a very large amount of funding, and it means that investors are expecting great things from your company,” Shokrollahi adds. “It’s very expensive to develop these of products, especially because they’re chip-based. This money will be used grow the company, to realize the product development path we are on, and to deliver these differentiated products to our partners in the 2027 timeframe.”
This new infusion of capital will accelerate the company’s strategic priorities which include manufacturing ramp-up of Kandou AI’s high-performance AI connectivity chips, deepening partnerships with leading hyperscale and AI infrastructure customers globally, and fueling the next generation of Kandou AI’s chip and IP portfolio to enable multi-terabit connectivity.
“This funding round is a clear validation of our vision from our partners and customers. It accelerates our goal of transforming AI hardware through products built on our groundbreaking copper-based interconnect and system IP,” says Srujan Linga, co-founder and CEO of Kandou AI. “We are excited to partner with leading hyperscale and enterprise customers to bring these next-generation AI systems to market.”