Taiwan's AerosoarX collaborates with U.S. firms on AI drones. 10/28/2026 06:52 PM Taipei, Oct. 28 (CNA) Taiwanese drone developer AerosoarX signed strategic cooperation memorandums with U.S. companies Rajant and SiMa.ai on Wednesday to develop AI-enabled unmanned systems. The partnerships combine AerosoarX's drone platforms with Rajant's mobile mesh networking technology and SiMa.ai's onboard AI computing, according to a company statement released at its brand launch event in Taipei. The combination is intended to let drones process sensor data onboard and exchange information with one another, supporting coordinated operations with less reliance on continuous ground control, the company said. AerosoarX Chairman Max Lo (羅正方) told reporters that the company had already become a supplier of drone platforms and components in the United States through its cooperation with Rajant. His presentation showed that AerosoarX sent personnel to Rajant's Kentucky facility in September for integration work and was targeting production readiness for its 15-inch AI-enabled first-person-view drone in November. The planned integration uses SiMa.ai's Modalix processor for onboard AI tasks such as visual perception and Rajant's mesh technology for exchanging and relaying data between aircraft. Lo described SiMa.ai as the only solution that met AerosoarX's requirements for 50 trillion operations per second (TOPS) of AI computing within its power constraints. Lo said the choice depended not simply on computing power, but on performance per watt, with AerosoarX co-founder and CEO Jason Wu (吳俊逸) also noting that energy efficiency was critical for drones. SiMa.ai founder and CEO Krishna Rangasayee, meanwhile, told the event that power efficiency and flight time were "very, very critical for success." Rangasayee said his company was working with more than 30 drone companies globally, adding that its processors and software were intended to help partners develop applications more quickly. Rajant Corp. Vice President of Systems Don Gilbreath said greater onboard computing would allow drones to coordinate tasks, altitudes and separation, reducing the need for an operator to manage each aircraft individually. "The more computing horsepower we have on the drones, the more we can do," he said. Gilbreath said the collaboration had already led to drone sales to U.S. Army and Navy research laboratories interested in the team's swarm demonstrations. Not every aircraft would require the same equipment, however, Lo said, explaining that a drone coordinating other aircraft could carry more capable hardware, with units assigned simpler tasks using less expensive configurations. On its U.S. business, Lo clarified that AerosoarX was supplying platforms and working jointly with Rajant, rather than acting as the prime contractor. His presentation identified Phase III of the U.S. Drone Dominance Program as a target for 2027. (By Chao Yen-hsiang)

SiMa.ai raises $150M to build AI chips for robots and drones. Chipmaker SiMa.ai raised $150M at a $1.45B valuation to build AI silicon for robots and drones, with real engineering work happening in Bengaluru. Oct 7, 2026 - 17:15 A chip startup most people outside the semiconductor world have never heard of just got valued at $1.45 billion - not for software, but for silicon meant to go inside machines that move: robots that walk, drones that fly themselves, and cars that brake before a human driver would. The round, in plain numbers. SiMa.ai, a San Jose-headquartered chip company, has closed a $150 million Series C - the funding stage startups typically raise once a product is proven and they need serious capital to scale it - co-led by Fidelity Management & Research and Amplify, with Dell Technologies Capital, J.P. Morgan, Maverick Capital and even the State of Michigan's investment arm joining in. That brings the company's total funding to $500 million since it was founded. The money isn't going toward a product you'll see this year - it's funding a next-generation chip platform slated for the first half of 2028, built to deliver what the company calls "1,000 dense TOPS" of compute. TOPS stands for trillions of operations per second, the industry's shorthand for how fast a chip can crunch through AI calculations; 1,000 dense TOPS packed into a low-power chip is a serious jump from what's commercially available on edge devices today. The target customers tell you where this is headed: * Medium and high-end drones that need to process camera and sensor data without phoning home to a cloud server * Humanoid robots, the category Tesla, Figure and a wave of Chinese manufacturers are racing to commercialize * Advanced driver-assistance systems and AI-powered car cockpits Why "physical AI" needs different chips. Most AI people interact with daily - a chatbot, a search summary, an image generator - runs in a data center somewhere, with effectively unlimited power and cooling on tap. A robot arm or a delivery drone doesn't have that luxury. It carries its own battery, generates its own heat, and often has to make a decision - stop, swerve, grip - in milliseconds, with no network connection to lean on. That's the premise behind "physical AI": intelligence that has to run entirely on the device, within a tight power budget, in real time. Robots and drones don't get to borrow a data center's compute. The intelligence has to live on the machine itself, running off a battery, with no room to wait for a round-trip to the cloud. It's a crowded field - Qualcomm, Hailo and Ambarella are all chasing the same low-power edge-AI market - which is part of why investors are willing to write large checks well ahead of SiMa.ai's next chip actually shipping. The India connection that's easy to miss. Here's the part that matters to readers in India specifically: SiMa.ai isn't just a Silicon Valley name with an Indian-American founder at the top, though CEO Krishna Rangasayee - who spent years running Xilinx's multi-billion-dollar semiconductor business before starting SiMa.ai - fits that familiar pattern. The company has built out a full design center in Bengaluru, with engineering led locally by Gopal Hegde, Sudershan Vuruputoor and Amit Kumar Mitra, covering everything from hardware architecture to the software stack that runs on top of the chips. That matters beyond one company's hiring page. India has spent the last few years trying to move from writing software for chips designed elsewhere to actually doing chip design work at home, through programs like the government's Design Linked Incentive scheme. A well-funded startup running real silicon architecture work out of Bengaluru - not just a support or testing function - is exactly the kind of high-skill engineering mandate that policy is trying to attract. It's also a signal for India's own drone and robotics startups, several of which currently import edge-AI modules from abroad because nothing built domestically hits the power-and-performance bar these machines need. What to watch next. None of SiMa.ai's new hardware ships before 2028, so this round is a bet on where robotics and autonomous machines are headed, not a product announcement. But the amount of capital chasing physical AI chips right now - against a backdrop of humanoid robot demos multiplying every few months - suggests the companies that get the power-efficiency equation right early will have a real head start when the hardware actually needs to leave the lab.