Silicon brought India to the digital age. But the chips that will drive its defence radars, electric vehicles, satellite links and 5G towers are being cut from a different material altogether. Gallium nitride — GaN — switches faster, runs hotter and wastes less energy than silicon, and it is the quiet material at the heart of the next generation of power and radio-frequency electronics. In Hyderabad, a young semiconductor design house called Spintronics AI Semiconductors has decided this is where India’s semiconductor story goes next — and it has just signed the partnership that could carry the country’s GaN work from the laboratory to the factory floor.
Image: Spintronics AI Semiconductors (official company image) — the company’s visual for its semiconductor design work, centred on chips for the post-silicon era.
The design house behind the GaN bet
Founded in 2024 by Raghu Varma, Spintronics AI Semiconductors is an emerging semiconductor design house focused on advancing next-generation semiconductor technologies, proprietary IP and products from India for global markets. The company combines expertise in analogue, mixed-signal, RF and power semiconductor design, and says it carries a portfolio of proprietary GaN-based products. The Hyderabad-headquartered company operates across India, Canada, Europe and the USA, and its team claims more than 27 years of industry experience, over 100 tape-outs, and design capability spanning 2nm to 180nm nodes.
The young company has already earned its place in India’s semiconductor ecosystem. It was selected for AIC T-Hub’s semiconductor programme cohort, and it is listed as a beneficiary of the Union government’s Design Linked Incentive scheme for EDA tool support, in an official Ministry of Electronics and IT document tabled in the Lok Sabha.
The CEERI handshake
The big move came on 1 October 2026, when Spintronics AI signed a memorandum of understanding with CSIR–Central Electronics Engineering Research Institute (CSIR-CEERI). Under the MoU, the two organisations formed a strategic Technology and Design Transfer partnership focused on GaN — the first GaN-focused partnership of its kind that any Indian company has entered with the institute, the company says. The collaboration will evaluate technology needs, infrastructure requirements and fabrication capabilities, and examine the feasibility of setting up an indigenous GaN technology development and fabrication facility in India.
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CEERI brings more than two decades of GaN device experience to the table — technology development, process know-how, device fabrication and characterisation — while Spintronics AI contributes semiconductor design, engineering and product-development muscle. Dr. Manish Mathew, Scientist F and head of the diamond research group at CSIR-CEERI, said the collaboration would combine the institute’s two decades of GaN device expertise with the company’s product-development capabilities to accelerate domestic manufacturing and semiconductor self-reliance. The stated goal: move advanced GaN research, process know-how and device design out of the laboratory and into an industry-led manufacturing ecosystem.
Why gallium nitride matters
GaN is a next-generation semiconductor material with a job description that reads like a checklist of India’s strategic priorities: defence and aerospace, space systems, satellite communications, radio-frequency communications, advanced telecommunications, power electronics and electric mobility. It handles high power and high frequency where silicon falters — which is why it sits at the heart of everything from radar transmitters to EV fast chargers.
The commercial prize is large. India’s GaN semiconductor market is projected to grow from about USD 224 million in 2026 to nearly USD 1.88 billion by 2033, according to the company, which says the initiative can help India capture more of that value domestically — by developing and manufacturing GaN products for power, RF, telecom, defence, space and automotive applications — while also opening up global markets for Indian-designed GaN products.
From a Hyderabad design house founded in 2024, to a national laboratory with twenty years of GaN craft, to a market that could grow more than eightfold in seven years — India’s semiconductor ambition is no longer just about assembling other people’s chips. It is about designing the material, the process and the products at home. If Spintronics AI and CSIR-CEERI pull this off, the next wave of India’s chips will not be made of silicon at all.
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