Engineer 1

Microchip Technology is expanding its product portfolio to target high-growth markets including edge AI, data centres, aerospace and defence. The company's strategy combines microcontrollers, FPGAs, timing and connectivity products into integrated system solutions. Microchip launched Revision 2.0 of its PolarFire FPGA Ethernet Sensor Bridge for NVIDIA Holoscan-based edge AI systems. The platform is 60% smaller than its predecessor, supports twice as many cameras and uses 10Gb Ethernet connectivity. The company introduced the Space CSAC-SA65 chip-scale atomic clock for LEO satellites and positioning applications. Aerospace and defence revenues increased 45.6% year over year in the first quarter of fiscal 2027. Microchip expects its data-centre portfolio to grow to approximately $1 billion in calendar 2026, up from $591 million in 2025.

Seedcamp leads $2.7M round for Ukrainian-founded physical AI startup Embedd. August 24, 2026 * Embedd, a London-based startup founded by Ukrainian entrepreneurs, has raised $2.7 million in pre-seed funding led by Seedcamp. * Its AI platform cuts the software integration work behind robots, cars, drones and medical devices from months down to weeks. * The startup is already working with Microchip Technology, one of the world's largest semiconductor makers. Embedd, a London-based startup building software infrastructure for robots, cars, drones and medical devices, has raised $2.7 million in pre-seed funding led by Seedcamp. Cocoa, Connect Ventures, 2100 Ventures, Vesna Capital, U.ventures, Underline Ventures, Common Magic, and Roosh Ventures also joined the round. Every intelligent machine runs on dozens of chips that don't share a common language, and engineers currently spend four to six months hand-writing the code that lets them talk to each other. Embedd's platform cuts that down to around three weeks, an eightfold reduction, and says it can deliver production-ready software for a given chip up to six times faster than the manual process. "The next wave of AI will power factories, vehicles, robots and critical infrastructure, but today, every change in hardware creates huge complexity for software teams, and that friction is already massively slowing innovation," said Michael Lazarenko, co-founder and CEO of Embedd. A software gap hiding behind the physical AI boom. The money is arriving at a busy moment for the category. Nearly $19 billion has gone into robotics and physical AI startups so far this year, with $16.3 billion of that landing in the first quarter alone. Most of it is chasing robots and foundation models. Embedd is chasing something less visible: the software layer that none of that hardware works without. Lazarenko founded Embedd with Maxim Gorinov and Valentin Gololobov, Ukrainian entrepreneurs who ran a hardware company together before this one. Covid-era chip shortages forced them to keep re-sourcing components and rewriting firmware from scratch, and Russia's invasion of Ukraine later took their production facility outright. Watching that rewrite cycle repeat itself is what convinced them the integration problem would only get worse as AI moved off screens and into physical machines. The startup works by turning chip documentation into a digital twin of the hardware, rather than having an engineer read a datasheet line by line. From hardware disruption to a new software company. It's not the only one going after this. Bengaluru-based H2LooP raised $2 million from Speciale Invest and 3one4 Capital earlier this year for a similar hardware-aware AI layer that pairs specialised models with a knowledge graph of hardware specs and safety standards. H2LooP relies on AI coding agents that work across existing codebases; Embedd builds outward from a structured hardware model instead. Which approach chipmakers standardise on is still an open question. Since launching commercially in April 2026, Embedd has signed on several semiconductor customers, most notably Microchip Technology, where it's enabling support for the Zephyr real-time operating system. "The competitive question in embedded is no longer whose silicon is fastest, it's whose silicon is easiest to build on. Our work with Embedd is about meeting developers inside the software ecosystems they've already committed to, rather than asking them to come to ours," said Rodger Richey, Microchip's vice president of development systems and academic programs. Embedd launched commercially in April 2026 and has since signed contracts with multiple semiconductor companies. Carlos Eduardo Espinal, general partner at Seedcamp, points to the scale of the problem as the draw: "Embedd is tackling one of the fundamental challenges facing industries from robotics and manufacturing to healthcare and automotive, and we're excited to back Michael and the team as they build the infrastructure underpinning the next generation of intelligent machines." Embedd plans to use the new funding to expand its platform and deepen partnerships with semiconductor companies. Its broader ambition is to make hardware easier to adopt across software ecosystems, reducing the time needed to bring new chips into products as physical AI becomes more widespread.

Microchip Technology has announced a radiation-tolerant Space CSAC SA65 atomic clock designed for satellite systems, targeting compact and energy-efficient timing in orbit. The clock offers radiation tolerance of at least 30 kRad and power consumption under 120 mW. The company also upgraded its PolarFire FPGA Ethernet Sensor Bridge, reducing board size by 60% whilst adding support for up to four cameras and NVIDIA Holoscan integration. The updated sensor bridge targets robotics, medical, and industrial applications requiring AI-driven edge sensor connectivity. Both launches align with Microchip's focus on embedded control solutions across aerospace, industrial, and medical sectors. The company, with a market capitalisation of approximately $43.1 billion, operates across the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Investors will watch for design wins and revenue contribution from these products in upcoming quarterly results.