Netrasemi, a fabless semiconductor startup working out of Thiruvananthapuram’s Technopark, is doing something India has historically imported rather than built: designing AI chips end to end, down to its own silicon IP. Its flagship chip, the Netra A2000 AI system-on-chip, achieved silicon bring-up in May 2026 on TSMC’s 12 nm node, is now production-ready, and is in customer trials with surveillance and automotive OEMs.
The chip that booted up
Silicon bring-up — the moment first manufactured silicon powers on and runs code — is the milestone that separates chip design from chip reality. The A2000 cleared it in May 2026, per reporting by The Hindu and EE Times, which is notable for a startup’s first major SoC on a leading-edge node: 12 nm is the process TSMC uses for serious commercial AI and networking silicon, not a classroom prototype run.
The A2000 integrates the company’s in-house Tej-NPU neural processing block, built on what Netrasemi calls its “Graph-Stream” hardware architecture, alongside vision processing, image signal processing and crypto engines — a deliberate edge-AI combination aimed at cameras and sensors that need to think where the data is captured. According to EE Times, the chip is now in the customer-evaluation phase with surveillance and automotive OEMs, with volume production at TSMC Taiwan and a commercial launch targeted for mid-2027.
A family of chips, not a one-off
What makes Netrasemi more than a single-chip story is the pipeline behind the A2000. The Netra R1000, an AI/ML microcontroller for IoT sensors, was co-developed with the College of Engineering Trivandrum under MeitY’s Chip-to-Startup (C2S) programme and has been sent to TSMC for fabrication, per The Economic Times. The Netra A4000, an advanced edge-AI server chip being developed with MeitY support, is aimed at being fabrication-ready by the second quarter of 2027.
As of this month, the roadmap is accelerating: Analytics India Magazine reported on 14 October that two more chips on 12 nm nodes are headed for tape-out. At SEMICON India 2026 in September, the company showcased a taped-out indigenous AI SoC for CCTV surveillance on the 12 nm node — an unusually concrete demo for a startup at this stage.
The road so far
Netrasemi was founded in 2020 by Jyothis Indirabhai (CEO), Sreejith Varma (CTO) and Deepa Geetha (COO), according to the company’s official site. It has raised a total of ₹125 crore from Zoho Corporation and Unicorn India Ventures, including a ₹107 crore Series A in July 2025. On the policy side, it was among the first four startups selected for MeitY’s ₹15 crore Design Linked Incentive in 2023 — one of the earliest bets the scheme placed on Indian chip design.
More Read
Caveats, honestly stated
“India’s first edge-AI chip” is the kind of superlative to handle carefully: TechGig and The Economic Times describe the A2000 as among the first AI/ML chips designed in India, and the independently confirmed achievement is the working silicon itself. The mid-2027 commercial launch and Q2 2027 tape-out targets are targets, not facts. The ₹125 crore funding total and DLI figures come from company and media reporting rather than regulatory filings. The visuals in this article are the company’s own renders; no public photograph of packaged A2000 silicon exists yet. “26/11” engraved on the A2000 render is not explained by the company — it is likely an internal revision code, and we are not reading meaning into it.
