Celera Semiconductor, a Silicon Valley startup pioneering analog design automation, today announced a $20 million equity investment from Maverick Silicon, a private investment firm focused on transformative semiconductor technologies.

This strategic financing will enable Celera to bring to market custom analog ICs developed based on its patented Nestos platform. The Nestos platform is a digital twin-based analog design library that enables fast, high-accuracy analog IC development. By automating the most complex parts of the analog design process, Celera is ushering in a new era of "real-time" analog product development for OEM customers across a wide range of industries.

Patrick Brockett, CEO of Celera Semiconductor, said, "We are thrilled to partner with Maverick Silicon, whose deep technical understanding and long-term vision align perfectly with ours. Analog IC design has historically faced a bottleneck: high demand and a lack of scalable solutions to meet it. Our platform changes that. We have assembled a team that combines top analog design expertise with advanced software and AI talent. Together, we are accelerating development cycles by 10x without compromising performance."

Celera's breakthrough stems from its use of "digital twins" of analog functions - mathematically precise models that replace manual circuit design with software-based optimization and generation. With Nestos, Celera has demonstrated to major customers that they can develop full-custom analog ICs in just 10% of the time required using traditional analog workflows. Calum MacRae, founder and CTO of Celera Semiconductor, said, "We believe real-time analog development is no longer a pipe dream, but a roadmap to 2030. Our customers are already witnessing the power of instant customization—chips can be precisely tailored to their needs without delivery delays, cost penalties, or design compromises."

Alberto Viviani, COO of Celera Semiconductor, said, "Maverick's investment will accelerate our go-to-market strategy. This will enable us to provide more markets and customers with the silicon they truly need. Traditional semiconductor companies cannot offer these solutions because traditional design processes are cumbersome, lengthy, and costly. With the support of industry-leading supply chain partners like Pioneer Semiconductor and ASE, Celera offers customers an unparalleled turnkey solution."

Kenneth Safar, Managing Director of Maverick Silicon, said, "Analog design has long faced structural challenges -  a limited talent pool and incremental tool improvements have made it difficult to keep pace with growing application demands. Celera "This is a groundbreaking change. By combining software and silicon in new ways, the company is enabling faster and more flexible simulation development. We are proud to support the team working to make real-time simulation a reality."

Using AI to speed up analog chip development by 10 times

OEMs look to custom analog ICs to meet the demands of their cutting-edge products. However, traditional analog IC suppliers and their outdated development processes hinder progress, resulting in slow, cumbersome, costly projects with low ROI.

Celera Semiconductor is changing the industry with its AI-driven, automated analog IC development platform—reducing time and effort by 10x compared to traditional processes. Get custom analog ICs faster, without the high cost and risk.

Celera, a startup founded in 2018, has been developing its AI-enhanced, "fully automated" analog and mixed-signal IC development platform for several years.

Celera has developed a software platform called ChipHub, which it claims can increase engineering efficiency tenfold. The company says the platform enables a 60V to 3.3V DC-DC step-down converter to go from design to mass production in just a few days.

"This is a significant milestone for Celera and a breakthrough for our customers," said Celera CEO Pat Brockett. "Celera has demonstrated that end-to-end automated design of high-performance analog integrated circuits is possible."

Brockt, who has served as an advisor to the company since 2019, has joined as CEO. He emphasized that Celera's business model is to operate as a chip product company under the Celera brand, developing custom ASSPs for customers. Brockett previously worked at National Semiconductor and served as CEO of Zarlink and Summit Microelectronics. The buck converter is targeted for Vanguard Semiconductor's 130nm BCD manufacturing process, but Brockett declined to name the customer. He stated that Celera is not limited to foundries and is developing AI expertise across a wide range of analog circuits, including op amps, comparators, filters, converters, and power management functions.

Celera CTO and founder Calum MacRae said, "Our first customer product is an advanced high-voltage buck converter for industrial and automotive applications. Our Nesto technology simplifies analog IC design, enabling even non-IC designers to generate custom silicon. A key advantage of Nesto technology is that the same algorithm can rapidly produce an entire family of buck converters in a matter of hours."

MacRae added, "Our IP is entirely digital. This enables us to generate data to train machine learning (ML) models, which in turn generate AI agents for analog design, layout, and modeling. The ability to generate large amounts of synthetic data makes Celera uniquely suited to applying ML to analog design."

The company claims that the resulting product designs offer advantages in chip size, cost, and performance, as well as faster design and verification.

Source: Content from Semiconductor Industry Observation

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