Novasilicon

NovaSilicon (芯星元智能) is a Chinese startup applying recursive self-improving AI systems to chip design, founded in May 2026 by CEO Linyang Li, a Fudan PhD and youth scientist at Shanghai AI Laboratory who previously worked on China's first open-source LLM MOSS and the InternThinker model . The company has raised two rounds totaling nearly RMB 100 million within its first two months: an initial exclusive round from 5Y Capital in the tens of millions, followed by a SenseTime Guoxiang Capital-led round in August 2026 .

Rather than building AI-augmented EDA tools, NovaSilicon deploys multi-agent systems to directly execute design, optimization, and verification tasks, starting from the back-end (analog layout and digital place-and-route) where engineering constraints are most quantifiable . It has already signed multimillion-yuan orders with industry-leading clients and published a methodology paper on arXiv (2608.14035) outlining its "Thinking Boundary Aware Super Intelligence" approach . The founding team includes COO Jianxi Xue, a veteran of digital chip design, and CTO Jianqiu Chen, formerly a core member at ASR Microelectronics, bringing combined decades of analog and mixed-signal experience .