Technology
CPUs & RISC-V
Companies that design or license general-purpose processors and CPU cores, including x86, Arm-based and RISC-V chips for servers, PCs, phones, vehicles and embedded devices.
67 companies
Explainer
CPUs & RISC-V explained
A CPU, or central processing unit, is the general-purpose chip that runs a computer. It reads instructions, does arithmetic and logic, and decides what happens next. Every phone, laptop and server has at least one.
CPUs are built around an instruction set architecture (ISA), the list of operations the chip understands. The main ISAs are x86 (Intel and AMD), Arm, and the open RISC-V standard. Software compiled for one ISA does not run natively on another.
How it differs from the usual approach
A CPU has a small number of powerful cores, each good at running one stream of varied, branching instructions quickly. A GPU has thousands of simpler cores that do the same operation on lots of data at once. CPUs are the better fit for operating systems, databases and code with many decisions. They are slower than GPUs on large, regular maths such as neural network training.
Where it is used
- Running operating systems and everyday applications on laptops, desktops and phones.
- Web servers, databases and general cloud workloads in data centers.
- Controlling and feeding data to GPUs and other accelerators in AI servers.
- Embedded controllers in cars, appliances and industrial equipment.
- Smaller AI inference jobs where a dedicated accelerator is not worth the cost.
What to watch
- Arm-based server chips from cloud providers have been taking a growing share of cloud CPU capacity, which puts pressure on x86.
- RISC-V is an open ISA that anyone can build on without a license fee. Its adoption is strongest in embedded and microcontroller products and is moving toward higher-performance chips.
- CPU makers are adding matrix-math instructions and on-chip neural processing units so that CPUs can handle light AI work.
- Chiplet designs, which join several small dies in one package, are now common in server CPUs.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a CPU and a GPU?
A CPU has a few strong cores for varied tasks. A GPU has many simple cores that run the same operation on large amounts of data in parallel. Most computers use both.
What is RISC-V?
RISC-V is an open instruction set, started at the University of California, Berkeley in 2010. Anyone can design chips with it without paying a license fee. It competes with the proprietary x86 and Arm instruction sets.
Do CPUs still matter for AI?
Yes. CPUs run the operating system, prepare data and manage accelerators in almost every AI server. They also handle small models and light inference directly.
- Semidynamics Barcelona company founded in 2016 by Roger Espasa that licenses 64-bit RISC-V cores with vector units: the in-order Avispado and the out-of-order Atrevido (Atrevido 423 released July 2023; Atrevido A426 now listed). Its website now also offers the Cervell NPU and a terabyte-scale AI inference unit (AIPU). CPUs & RISC-V · AI Accelerators —
- Akeana Akeana is a RISC-V processor IP company. RISC-V is an open instruction set, and Akeana licenses processor core designs that other firms build into their own chips. It came out of stealth in August 2024 with three core families, from 32-bit designs to high-performance 64-bit cores, along with supporting blocks such as a cache and an AI matrix engine. The company was founded in 2021 by a team with server chip design experience and is based in San Jose, California. ASICs · CPUs & RISC-V $100M+ initial funding ($107M total; Kleiner Perkins, Mayfield, Fidelity)
- GTGreenWaves Technologies GreenWaves Technologies is a fabless chip designer, meaning it designs processors and leaves manufacturing to outside foundries. Its GAP9 processor combines ten cores based on the open RISC-V instruction set with a neural network engine, built to run small AI models on battery-powered devices such as wireless earbuds and hearing products. The design uses GlobalFoundries 22nm FDX technology, which helps keep power draw low. The company was founded in 2014 and is based in Grenoble, France. Edge Computing · AI Accelerators · CPUs & RISC-V —
- Espressif Systems Shanghai microcontroller maker founded in 2008 and listed on the STAR Market. It reported in 2022 that it was moving to RISC-V, and its ESP32-P4, announced in 2023, has dual high-performance RISC-V cores at up to 400 MHz, a low-power core, MIPI camera and display interfaces and H.264 encoding. CPUs & RISC-V · Edge Computing —
- AMAmbiq Micro Austin company founded in 2010 as Cubiq Microchip, spun out of the University of Michigan, making ultra-low-power Arm-based microcontrollers and SoCs (Apollo line) using its subthreshold design method for wearables and edge AI. It listed on the NYSE as AMBQ in July 2025, selling 4 million shares at $24 to raise $96 million. CPUs & RISC-V · Edge Computing —
- CCCondor Computing Condor Computing is a RISC-V processor company, meaning it designs CPU cores on the open RISC-V instruction set that others license into their own chips. It is not a chip seller. Its site could not be loaded during research, so its products, parent company and customers are unconfirmed, and the defense and aerospace focus in the earlier description is unverified. ASICs · CPUs & RISC-V —
- Flow Computing Flow Computing develops the Parallel Processing Unit (PPU), a block of hardware that sits beside a CPU and takes on work that can run in parallel, leaving the CPU to handle the rest. It can be built on the same silicon as the CPU or as a chiplet, a small die packaged alongside others. The company says the design is independent of instruction set and works with Arm, x86, RISC-V and Open Power CPUs. A compiler for the PPU was in alpha as of May 2025. Flow Computing is based in Finland. AI Accelerators · CPUs & RISC-V —
- Codasip Codasip develops RISC-V processor IP, meaning licensable processor designs that chipmakers build into their own products. It also offers Codasip Studio, a toolset for customising processors using its CodAL description language, and CHERI memory protection technology aimed at silicon security. Its markets include automotive, industrial, defense and IoT. The company was founded in 2014 by Karel Masarik and is privately held. In July 2025 its board started an expedited process to sell the company. Custom Silicon · AI Accelerators · CPUs & RISC-V —
- T-Head (Alibaba) Chip unit of Alibaba Group, set up in September 2018. Its CPU line includes the XuanTie RISC-V cores (XuanTie 910 in July 2019; the server-class C930 announced February 2025, with RVA23 compatibility and licensing to chip developers) and the Arm-based Yitian 710 cloud chip (October 2021). It also makes AI chips. CPUs & RISC-V · Custom Silicon · AI Accelerators —
- Nuvoton Technology Nuvoton Technology designs microcontrollers, including Arm Cortex-M and 8051 families, along with mixed-signal, audio and baseboard management controller chips used in servers and embedded products. It was split off from Winbond Electronics in 2008, with Winbond keeping the memory business, and listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange in September 2010. Nuvoton is a fabless-style supplier of control silicon that sits beside the main processors in computing systems. The company is headquartered in Hsinchu, Taiwan. ASICs · Custom Silicon · CPUs & RISC-V —
- SUSunway Sunway is a family of Chinese processors, not a standalone company, used in supercomputers built by the National Research Center of Parallel Computer Engineering and Technology and run at the National Supercomputing Center in Wuxi. The SW26010 chip has 256 small compute cores plus four management cores, a many-core design that favours raw parallel throughput over single-thread speed. It powers the Sunway TaihuLight system, which uses 40,960 of them. The processors were developed by the Jiangnan Computing Lab in Wuxi, mainly for Chinese government and military use. Custom Silicon · ASICs · HPC & AI Systems —
- C-DAC (VEGA Processors) Indian government computing agency under MeitY, founded in 1988 and based in Pune. Its VEGA family of RISC-V processors spans THEJAS32 and THEJAS64 up to the DHRUV64 (VEGA AS2161), a 1 GHz dual-core 64-bit chip released on 15 December 2025 under the Digital India RISC-V programme; Dhanush and Dhanush+ are in development. CPUs & RISC-V —
- Syntacore RISC-V processor IP company established in 2015. Its cores range from the open-source 32-bit SCR1 microcontroller core to the SCR7 and SCR9 Linux-capable application cores, and it sells tools, an FPGA SDK and design services. Yadro took control of the company in 2019. A November 2025 article describes its SCR1, SCR3, SCR4 and SCR6 MCU-class cores. CPUs & RISC-V —
- SISiPearl SiPearl designs high-performance computing processors in Europe. Its first product, Rhea1, is an Arm-based CPU with 80 Neoverse V1 cores, each with SVE vector units that apply one instruction to many numbers at once, plus HBM memory stacks placed in the same package for high bandwidth. It is manufactured on TSMC's N6 process. SiPearl was established in 2019 with European Union funding through the European Processor Initiative. Rhea1 is intended for the CPU cluster of Jupiter, Europe's first exascale supercomputer, at Forschungszentrum Julich in Germany. AI Accelerators · Custom Silicon · CPUs & RISC-V €130M Series A closed (July 2025)
- Qualcomm Qualcomm designs wireless and computing chips and licenses wireless patents. Its chip business (QCT) sells Snapdragon processors, modems and connectivity products for smartphones, automotive systems and IoT devices, while its licensing business (QTL) covers 3G, 4G and 5G technology. Qualcomm is fabless, so outside foundries manufacture its chips. It supplies phone makers, carmakers and device makers rather than selling to consumers directly. The company was incorporated in 1985 and is based in San Diego, California. Custom Silicon · AI Accelerators · Edge Computing —
- RIRivos Rivos was a Santa Clara startup that designed data center processors and AI accelerators on RISC-V, an open instruction set that any company can use without paying a licence fee. Its work covered both the CPU and the accelerator side of server chips. Meta confirmed in October 2025 that it had acquired the company, with terms undisclosed, to support its in-house chip program for AI. Rivos was founded in 2021 and no longer operates as an independent company. Custom Silicon · AI Accelerators · CPUs & RISC-V $2B valuation (acquired)
- VMVentana Micro Systems Ventana Micro Systems designed high-performance RISC-V processor cores and chiplets for data centres under the Veyron name. RISC-V is an open instruction set that any company can use without licensing fees, unlike Arm designs. Chiplets are small dies combined in one package. Ventana was founded in 2018 and was based in Cupertino, California. Qualcomm announced in December 2025 that it had acquired the company, with financial terms undisclosed, to add to its own CPU and RISC-V engineering. ASICs · AI Accelerators · CPUs & RISC-V $108M+
- HIHygon Information Technology Hygon designs x86 server processors and the DCU, a data-centre accelerator for AI and scientific computing. Its Dhyana CPUs derive from AMD's first-generation Zen design, which AMD licensed to a joint venture with Hygon in 2016, so they run standard x86 software while being sold for the Chinese market. Hygon began in October 2014 as Tianjin Haiguang Advanced Technology Investment and is now headquartered in Beijing. The US added it to the Entity List in June 2019, which restricts access to American technology. Custom Silicon · ASICs · CPUs & RISC-V —
- ATAllwinner Technology Zhuhai fabless SoC designer founded in 2007 and listed on Shenzhen (300458) that makes Arm application processors (A-, H- and R-series). Its D1, announced April 2021 around a T-Head XuanTie C906 core, was described as the first mass-produced RISC-V application processor. CPUs & RISC-V · Edge Computing —
- Tenstorrent Tenstorrent designs AI processors and licenses RISC-V and AI intellectual property to customers building their own silicon. Its Wormhole and Blackhole accelerator cards are built around Tensix compute cores, and Blackhole adds on-die RISC-V cores for orchestration without a separate host processor. The company also sells developer systems such as the TT-QuietBox and larger Galaxy servers. Tenstorrent is led by chip architect Jim Keller and emphasizes open-source software and the royalty-free RISC-V instruction set. AI Accelerators · HPC & AI Systems · CPUs & RISC-V ~$800M round in progress at $3.2B valuation (Fidelity-led, Nov 2025); $1B+ raised
- Quintauris RISC-V company incorporated in Munich on 22 December 2023 by Bosch, Infineon, Nordic Semiconductor, NXP and Qualcomm. It builds reference architectures and compatible RISC-V platforms, starting with automotive and later IoT and consumer; its RT-Europa platform is described as the first RISC-V real-time platform for automotive. CEO is Alexander Kocher. CPUs & RISC-V · Edge Computing —
- MTMindgrove Technologies Mindgrove Technologies is a fabless chip company based in Chennai, meaning it designs chips but does not make them. It was founded in 2021 and was incubated at IIT Madras. Its chips build on the Shakti processor, an open-source RISC-V design from IIT Madras, where RISC-V is a freely licensable instruction set. Its Secure IoT chip, launched in May 2024, runs at 700 MHz and includes an AES-256 accelerator, one-time programmable memory and a hardware random number generator. It targets wearables, smart meters and connected home devices. Edge Computing · Custom Silicon · CPUs & RISC-V $8M Series A (December 2024)
- ECESWIN Computing Beijing RISC-V chip company, part of Beijing ESWIN Technology Group. Its EIC7700X edge SoC pairs four SiFive P550 cores with an Imagination GPU and an in-house 19.95 INT8 TOPS NPU, and it showed automotive chips on its own RISC-V cores in April 2026. Its site lists a Hong Kong Stock Exchange listing on 9 October 2026. CPUs & RISC-V · Edge Computing —
- NXP Semiconductors NXP Semiconductors makes chips for automotive, industrial and mobile uses, including digital signal processors, which are specialised for fast repetitive arithmetic on audio and sensor data. Its SAF9xxx audio processors serve car infotainment systems. NXP began in 2006 as a spin-off of Philips, whose semiconductor unit dates to the 1950s, and in December 2015 it completed a merger with Freescale, a company with Motorola roots. NXP is headquartered at the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven, Netherlands. DSPs · Edge Computing · CPUs & RISC-V —
- ISIngenic Semiconductor Ingenic Semiconductor designs processors and system-on-chip products, mainly for embedded and consumer devices. Its XBurst CPU cores are based on the MIPS instruction set, and the second generation, XBurst2, appeared in 2020 in the X2000. The company licenses MIPS, designs its own core microarchitecture and has chips made by outside foundries. It was founded in 2005 by Liu Qiang, who is chairman, and is headquartered in Beijing, China. A 2011 prospectus covered its stock market listing. CPUs & RISC-V · Edge Computing —
- GigaDevice GigaDevice designs memory and microcontroller chips. Its flash lines include SPI NOR, a small, fast memory often used to store boot code, and SPI and parallel NAND. Its GD32 microcontrollers use Arm cores, and the GD32V series, introduced in 2019, uses the open RISC-V instruction set. The company was founded in 2005 in Beijing and has been listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange since August 2016, with a secondary Hong Kong listing from January 2026. Custom Silicon · Memory & Storage · CPUs & RISC-V —
- Andes Technology Andes Technology licenses processor intellectual property based on the RISC-V instruction set, selling its AndesCore designs to chip makers who build them into their own SoCs. The portfolio ranges from small 32-bit embedded cores to 64-bit out-of-order multicore designs, with vector and automotive safety variants. It is a founding premier member of RISC-V International. The company is headquartered in Hsinchu, Taiwan, and has been listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange under code 6533 since 2017. ASICs · AI Accelerators · CPUs & RISC-V —
- M(MCST (Elbrus) Moscow processor designer founded in 1992 that makes the Elbrus VLIW CPUs and the SPARC-derived MCST-R line for Russian government and industrial users. Elbrus-16S appeared in 2021, the Elbrus-2S3 reappeared on the Russian market in June 2024 and PLC-Elbrus controllers passed state registration in December 2024; a 32-core Elbrus-32S was planned for samples in 2025, without confirmation that samples exist. CPUs & RISC-V —
- STMicroelectronics STMicroelectronics designs and manufactures semiconductors including microcontrollers, sensors, power devices and silicon carbide products used in automotive, industrial and consumer electronics. It operates its own fabs as well as using outside foundries. The company was formed in 1987 by the merger of Italy's SGS Microelettronica and France's Thomson Semiconducteurs, and took the STMicroelectronics name in 1998. Its operational headquarters is in Plan-les-Ouates near Geneva, Switzerland, and its shares are listed in New York, Paris and Milan. ASICs · Custom Silicon · CPUs & RISC-V —
- Frontgrade Gaisler Frontgrade Gaisler designs radiation-hardened processors and processor designs for spacecraft, based in Gothenburg, Sweden. Radiation-hardened means built to keep working despite the particle radiation found in space. Its chips include the quad-core GR740 and the GR712RC, built on its LEON SPARC processor cores, and it also licenses a RISC-V core called NOEL. It has delivered computing for harsh environments since 2001, and its processors have flown on missions such as Solar Orbiter, BepiColombo and JUICE. The brand belongs to Frontgrade, which is based in Colorado Springs. ASICs · CPUs & RISC-V —
- Fujitsu Fujitsu is a Japanese IT group that sells servers, storage, software, consulting and cloud services, and also designs processors for supercomputers. With the research institute RIKEN it built the Fugaku supercomputer around its own A64FX processor, which uses the Arm instruction set rather than x86. This sets it apart from most server vendors, which buy processors from others. Fujitsu was founded on 20 June 1935 and moved its headquarters to Kawasaki, Japan, in 2024 from Tokyo. HPC & AI Systems · CPUs & RISC-V —
- Infineon Technologies Infineon Technologies is a German semiconductor manufacturer headquartered in Neubiberg near Munich. It makes power semiconductors, automotive microcontrollers such as the AURIX family, sensors, and security and connectivity chips. These parts are used in vehicles and industrial equipment. Infineon was spun off from Siemens in April 1999, and it acquired International Rectifier in 2015 to strengthen its MOSFET portfolio. ASICs · Custom Silicon · Memory & Storage —
- Ubitium Ubitium is developing a universal RISC-V microprocessor for physical AI, meaning machines such as robots that sense and act. It describes the chip as a CGRA, or coarse-grained reconfigurable array, in which the hardware layout can be adapted to different workloads. In April 2026 the company said it was the first CGRA to run Linux without a host processor. Ubitium GmbH is a German company, and it announced a 14 million dollar raise in October 2026. AI Accelerators · FPGAs · CPUs & RISC-V $3.7M seed (Nov 2024, Runa Capital, Inflection, KBC)
- Intel Corporation Designs x86 processors: Core Ultra client chips and Xeon server chips. The Core Ultra Series 3 'Panther Lake' laptop processor, the first consumer chip on Intel 18A, was unveiled at CES in January 2026, and the Xeon 'Clearwater Forest' E-core server part (up to 288 cores) was introduced in March 2026. Separate entries cover Intel Arc, Loihi and Intel Foundry. CPUs & RISC-V · Custom Silicon —
- Imagination Technologies Imagination Technologies is a British company that designs graphics processor architectures, sold under the PowerVR name, and licenses them to chip makers who build them into their own processors. It is an intellectual property supplier, so it does not sell chips of its own. Its newer GPU designs include the IMG DXD architecture, released in 2023. The company was founded in 1985 as VideoLogic, is based in Kings Langley, England, and was bought in 2017 by Canyon Bridge Capital Partners after leaving the London Stock Exchange. GPUs · AI Accelerators · CPUs & RISC-V —
- Sophgo Beijing chip company established in 2019 that makes the SG2042, a 64-core 2 GHz RISC-V server processor released in 2023, and the SG2044 second generation released in 2025 (merged into Linux 6.16 on 31 May 2025). An EPCC evaluation measured up to 4.91 times the SG2042's performance at 64 cores. It also makes SG200X RISC-V and Arm vision processors. CPUs & RISC-V · HPC & AI Systems —
- Loongson Loongson designs general-purpose processors for Chinese desktops, servers and embedded systems. Its older chips used the MIPS instruction set, the rulebook that defines what software a processor can run. Since 2020 it has used its own LoongArch architecture, which a licence holder disputed as too close to MIPS before an arbitration largely went Loongson's way. The company was established in Beijing in April 2010 as a venture between the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Computing Technology and the chip designer BLX IC Design. Custom Silicon · ASICs · CPUs & RISC-V —
- Openchip Openchip designs RISC-V accelerators and systems on chip, together with the software needed to run them, for AI and high performance computing. RISC-V is an open instruction set that anyone can build on without a licence fee. The company is headquartered in Barcelona, Spain, and says it was selected under a European Important Project of Common European Interest to design a family of accelerator chips. It positions its products as European alternatives for sovereign computing. AI Accelerators · ASICs · CPUs & RISC-V —
- Nuclei System Technology Chinese RISC-V core IP vendor founded in 2018 by Bob Hu, creator of the Hummingbird E203 open-source core. It sells the N-series cores plus NS security and NA functional-safety variants; reports cite over 150 customers and investment from CETC and Xiaomi, and a later round led by China Fortune Innovation Capital. CPUs & RISC-V · Edge Computing —
- IBM Power and Z Processors IBM designs the Power and Telum processors used in its Power servers and z mainframes. Telum II (eight cores at 5.5 GHz, Samsung 5 nm) was shown at Hot Chips in August 2024 and shipped in the z17 mainframe announced in April 2025; Power11 systems launched in July 2025. IBM's quantum and neuromorphic work is listed under separate entries. CPUs & RISC-V —
- SiFive SiFive designs processor cores based on RISC-V, an open instruction set that any company can use without paying a fee for the architecture itself. It mainly licenses these designs to chip makers, who build them into their own products. In January 2026 it said it would integrate Nvidia's NVLink Fusion, an interconnect that links processors to Nvidia GPUs, into its data centre platforms. SiFive was founded in California in 2015 and is fabless, meaning it does not run its own factories. ASICs · CPUs & RISC-V $400M Series G (Apr 2026, Atreides-led, $3.65B valuation)
- HiSilicon Huawei's wholly owned chip designer, formally established in 2004. It makes the Kirin smartphone and PC processors (Kirin 9030 in Q4 2025, Kirin X90 PC chips in 2025) and the Kunpeng Arm server CPUs. Huawei's Connect 2025 roadmap lists the 96- and 192-core Kunpeng 950 for 2026 and a 256-core part for 2028. Ascend AI chips are listed separately. CPUs & RISC-V · Custom Silicon —
- Tachyum Tachyum designs the Prodigy processor, which it calls a universal processor because one chip is meant to handle general server work, high performance computing and AI, instead of pairing separate CPUs and GPUs. The company says Prodigy can also run x86, Arm and RISC-V software. These performance claims come from Tachyum and have not been independently benchmarked. Founded in 2016 by Radoslav Danilak, it has its US headquarters in Las Vegas, Nevada, and its European headquarters and R&D site in Bratislava, Slovakia. AI Accelerators · Custom Silicon · CPUs & RISC-V $500M purchase order from Series C investor (Nov 2025)
- VIA Technologies Taiwanese chip designer that holds an x86 licence. It acquired Centaur Technology in 1999 and co-founded the Chinese x86 maker Zhaoxin in 2013 with the Shanghai municipal government (reported 14.75% stake in 2021). Its own processor activity today is limited, and the entry is mainly relevant as the source of the Centaur x86 design lineage. CPUs & RISC-V —
- Phytium Technology Phytium designs Arm-based processors under the FeiTeng brand, covering server CPUs for data centres, desktop chips and embedded parts. Arm is a licensed instruction set, so Phytium builds its own cores that run Arm software rather than copying a ready-made design. The company is based in Tianjin. The US Commerce Department added Tianjin Phytium Information Technology to its Entity List in April 2021, citing support for Chinese military supercomputing, which limits its access to American technology. Its recent server chips include the 64-core Tengyun S2500. Custom Silicon · ASICs · CPUs & RISC-V —
- Alif Semiconductor Fabless maker of Arm Cortex-M55 microcontrollers with Ethos-U55 NPUs (Ensemble) and a wireless variant (Balletto). It opened a European R&D site in Oulu, Finland in May 2025. On 10 September 2026 Analog Devices announced an agreement to acquire Alif for $1.35 billion plus up to $200 million contingent, closing expected before end of 2026. CPUs & RISC-V · Edge Computing —
- STStarFive StarFive, formally Shanghai StarFive Semiconductor Technology, designs RISC-V processors. It licenses CPU and network-on-chip IP, which are ready-made design blocks, and sells its own chips, including the JH7110 application processor, a baseboard management controller chip and microcontrollers. It also sells VisionFive single-board computers and development kits, and publishes an open-source Linux SDK. The company is based in Shanghai. Production status of newer chips and its founding year were not confirmed. ASICs · Custom Silicon · CPUs & RISC-V —
- Apple Silicon Apple silicon is the family of processors that Apple designs in-house for the Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV and Vision Pro. Most are systems on a chip, meaning the processor, graphics, memory controllers and neural engine sit on one piece of silicon, and most are built on the Arm instruction set. Apple does not manufacture them and relies on contract foundries, mainly TSMC. The Mac moved to its own chips from the M1, shown in November 2020, and the Mac range completed that move in June 2023. Apple is based in Cupertino, California. Custom Silicon · AI Accelerators · CPUs & RISC-V —
- Telechips Seongnam-based fabless designer (KOSDAQ: 054450) of Arm-based automotive application processors: Dolphin+ (Cortex-A53/R5), Dolphin3 and Dolphin5 (Cortex-A76 with Mali-G78AE GPU and Ethos-N78 NPU, built with Samsung Foundry). 2024 revenue was about 186.6 billion won. CPUs & RISC-V · Edge Computing —
- AWS Graviton AWS Graviton is a family of server processors that Amazon Web Services designs for its own cloud. They use the Arm instruction set rather than x86, and each virtual CPU maps to a full physical core instead of a shared thread. The first generation arrived in November 2018 in EC2 A1 instances, and later generations moved to Arm Neoverse cores, with Graviton4 announced in November 2023. Design is done by Annapurna Labs, a chip design team that Amazon acquired in 2015. AWS is part of Amazon and is based in Seattle. Custom Silicon · CPUs & RISC-V —
- Ampere Computing Ampere Computing designs Arm-based server processors for cloud data centres. Its Altra family offers up to 128 cores and its AmpereOne family up to 192 single-threaded cores, with each core a full processor that does not share execution resources with another thread. The design aims at predictable performance and low power use per core. Ampere was founded by former Intel president Renee James and is based in Santa Clara, California. SoftBank Group announced in March 2025 that it would buy the company for 6.5 billion dollars, and the deal closed in November 2025. Custom Silicon · CPUs & RISC-V —
- Bluespec Bluespec supplies RISC-V processor cores and related design tools. RISC-V is an open instruction set that companies can build on without a licence fee. Its offerings include portable soft cores, domain-specific cores for acceleration, hardware-assisted verification, and a high-level synthesis flow called Accelerate-HLS, which turns software-style descriptions into chip logic. It also works with Synopsys on RISC-V verification. The company lists its office in Framingham, Massachusetts, not Waltham. ASICs · CPUs & RISC-V —
- Esperanto Technologies Esperanto Technologies designed AI and high-performance computing chips built on RISC-V, an open instruction set. Its ET-SoC-1 inference chip carried over a thousand small RISC-V processors on a single TSMC 7 nanometer die. The company's website now states that it has ceased operations and that its intellectual property was acquired by Nekko.ai. The company was founded in 2014 and was based in Mountain View, California. It no longer sells products. AI Accelerators · CPUs & RISC-V —
- Cortus French fabless company near Montpellier selling RISC-V microcontrollers and AI inference chips, mainly for automotive and avionics. In February 2025 it reported first silicon of the MINERVA 64-bit out-of-order RISC-V processor, made on GlobalFoundries 22FDX, booting Linux. Its ULYSS family targets ISO 26262 automotive use; a partnership with CTAG on AUTOSAR was announced in February 2026. CPUs & RISC-V · Edge Computing —
- NVIDIA NVIDIA designs GPUs, CPUs, DPUs and networking products such as NVLink, InfiniBand and Ethernet, and develops the CUDA software platform that runs on its GPUs. Its Data Center products are widely used for AI training and inference, and it also sells GeForce graphics cards for gaming and RTX workstation GPUs. NVIDIA is fabless. Foundries such as TSMC make its wafers, memory comes from suppliers including SK hynix, Micron and Samsung, and partners handle assembly and packaging. The company was incorporated in 1993 and is based in Santa Clara, California. GPUs · AI Accelerators · HPC & AI Systems —
- Arm Holdings Arm designs processor cores and related designs for GPUs and neural processing units, and licenses them to other companies instead of selling most chips itself. Licensees such as phone and server chip makers build the designs into their own silicon. This licensing model separates it from firms like Intel or AMD that make and sell finished processors. Arm is headquartered in Cambridge, England, was founded in 1990 as a joint venture of Acorn Computers, Apple and VLSI Technology, and has been majority owned by SoftBank Group since 2016. It listed on Nasdaq in September 2023. Custom Silicon · AI Accelerators · CPUs & RISC-V —
- InCore Semiconductor InCore Semiconductors designs processor cores based on RISC-V, an open instruction set that anyone can use without paying a license fee, and licenses them to chip makers. Its cores include Azurite, a small low-power embedded design, and Calcite, which targets higher performance. The company grew out of the Shakti processor project at IIT Madras and was founded in Chennai in 2018. It raised $3 million in seed funding from Peak XV in 2023. ASICs · CPUs & RISC-V · Custom Silicon $3M seed (Peak XV)
- Rockchip Fuzhou SoC designer founded in 2001 and listed on the Shanghai exchange (603893) that makes Arm application processors from the RK3399 to the 8-core RK3588 and RK3576. Preliminary specs for the RK3668 (10 Cortex-A730/A530 cores, 16 TOPS NPU) were announced at RKDC 2025. CPUs & RISC-V · Edge Computing —
- SPSpacemiT SpacemiT designs processors based on RISC-V, an open instruction set, aimed mainly at AI workloads. Its products include the Key Stone K1 eight-core chip, the VitalStone V100 server processor and the K3 chip built on its X100 core. It also sells Muse-branded consumer devices, including a laptop running its Bianbu operating system. SpacemiT is privately held and based in Hangzhou, China. ASICs · AI Accelerators · Edge Computing $86M Series B (2025); Series A+ in hundreds of millions CNY
- Bouffalo Lab Bouffalo Lab is a fabless chip designer (it designs chips but does not own factories) that makes low-power wireless system-on-chip products for smart IoT and edge devices. Its product families combine Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Low Energy and Zigbee radios with processors, and also cover Matter, Thread and Bluetooth Mesh standards. It is known for building these parts around the open RISC-V instruction set. The company was established in Nanjing, China, in 2016 and has its headquarters there, in the Jiangbei New Area. CPUs & RISC-V · Edge Computing —
- AMD AMD designs processors and accelerators across several product lines. These include EPYC server CPUs, Instinct data center GPUs for AI and high performance computing, Ryzen client processors, Radeon graphics cards, and FPGAs and adaptive SoCs from its Embedded business. Its ROCm software supports Instinct GPUs. AMD does not own fabs. It relies mainly on TSMC for wafers, with packaging and test handled by partners in Asia. The company was incorporated in 1969 and is headquartered in Santa Clara, California. GPUs · AI Accelerators · HPC & AI Systems —
- Zhaoxin Zhaoxin designs x86-compatible processors, meaning chips that run the same software as Intel and AMD parts, mainly for the Chinese market. Its KaiXian line targets desktop and business PCs and its KaiSheng line targets servers. The company was set up in 2013 as a joint venture between Taiwan's VIA Technologies and a Shanghai municipal government investment firm, and its ability to build x86 chips rests on VIA's x86 licence. Its earliest designs came from VIA's Isaiah core, and it has since developed its own microarchitectures. Custom Silicon · ASICs · CPUs & RISC-V —
- AheadComputing AheadComputing designs high-performance CPU cores based on RISC-V, an open instruction set, and plans to license them as intellectual property for other companies to build into chips. It was founded in July 2024 by four engineers who left Intel, led by chief executive Debbie Marr, a former Intel Fellow with 33 years at the company. A seed round of $21.5 million led by Eclipse was announced in early 2025, and Tenstorrent chief executive Jim Keller joined its board. AI Accelerators · CPUs & RISC-V · ASICs $21.5M seed (Feb 2025)
- Microchip Technology Microchip Technology makes microcontrollers, which are small self-contained processors used to run embedded systems such as appliances, vehicles and industrial machines. Its best-known lines are PIC and AVR. It also sells analog, power management, memory, wireless and timing chips, plus development tools. General Instrument spun off its microelectronics division in 1989 to create the company, which is based in Chandler, Arizona. Microchip is listed on Nasdaq and grew through acquisitions including Atmel in 2016 and Microsemi in 2018. Custom Silicon · FPGAs · CPUs & RISC-V —
- Renesas Electronics Renesas Electronics makes microcontrollers, system-on-chip products, analog and power devices, with a large presence in automotive and industrial markets and a growing range of edge AI processors. It began operating in April 2010 when NEC Electronics absorbed Renesas Technology and took the Renesas name. Renesas Technology had itself been formed in 2003 from the semiconductor divisions of Hitachi and Mitsubishi Electric. The company is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. ASICs · AI Accelerators · Edge Computing —
- BIBeijing Institute of Open Source Chip (BOSC) Beijing institute behind XiangShan, an open-source high-performance RISC-V core. The second generation, Nanhu, taped out at 2 GHz on 14 nm; the third, Kunminghu, was announced in January 2025 for a 2025 debut, and the August 2025 World RISC-V Day Beijing event still showed Nanhu hardware. Release of Kunminghu silicon was not confirmed in sources found. CPUs & RISC-V —
- PSPragmatic Semiconductor Pragmatic Semiconductor makes flexible integrated circuits, called FlexICs, which are processors and other chips built on thin flexible substrates instead of rigid silicon wafers. This lets them be embedded in packaging, labels and everyday objects at low cost. The company is headquartered in Cambridge, UK, runs a 200mm plant in Sedgefield, and opened a 300mm fab at Pragmatic Park near Durham in March 2024. Its third-generation FlexIC platform targets mixed-signal custom chip designs. ASICs · Custom Silicon · CPUs & RISC-V $400M+ total (Series D $231M led 2023; further to >$400M by 2025)