BigEndian Semiconductors raises $3 Mn in seed round

Fabless semiconductor design startup BigEndian has raised $3 million in  its seed round led by Vertex Ventures SEA & India. The round also included participation from strategic investors, including Amitabh Nagpal, head of startup business development at Amazon Web Services. 

The proceeds will be used to expand its engineering team, enhance research and development capabilities, and scale operations.

Founded in 2024 by Kumar, Renuka Prasad, Harpreet Wadhawan, Dinesh Annayya, Kanagaraju Ponnusamy, and Jansen Cheng, BigEndian is building semiconductor solutions in the surveillance vertical. Its first SoC is being built for surveillance cameras for enterprise and consumer applications.

The startup initially plans surveillance chips, working with Taiwanese fab company UMC, with its reference chip based on a 28nm node process coming in the first quarter of 2025.

It also plans to broaden its presence over time and look at the overall IoT market, predominantly led by 16- and 32-bit microcontrollers.

In the fabless semiconductor space, Morphing Machines had raised $2.76 million in its seed round led by Speciale Invest in June this year. Earlier in 2023, InCore Semiconductor had also raised $3 million from Peak XV.