Netrasemi, a Kerala-based semiconductor start-up, has built an artificial intelligence chip, called the A2000, that is meant for cameras, drones and robots. A report from Indian Defence News dated 29 May 2026 says that the company has completed silicon bring-up, which is the stage at which the first chips made are powered on and tested, and plans mass production later in 2026 at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.
The chip is a system-on-chip for edge AI, built on a 12-nanometre process. Edge AI means running AI models on a device, such as a camera, and not in a distant data centre, which cuts delay and bandwidth use. The target uses listed in the report are smart cameras, drones, robotics, industrial automation, surveillance on drones and CCTV, and intelligent video gateways. At SEMICON India 2026, according to summaries of the event, the company showed an AI chip for CCTV with AI and machine-learning accelerators and vision and video engines.
The design stays in India while the manufacturing is done in Taiwan. The report says that the company retains the design and intellectual property in India and uses TSMC to make the chips. This pattern, in which an Indian company designs and a foreign fab manufactures, is how most Indian chip start-ups work today, because India has no commercial fab yet, although the Tata-PSMC plant at Dholera is being built.
The funding totals Rs 125 crore. A Series A round of Rs 107 crore was led by Zoho Corporation and Unicorn India Ventures, according to the report, and the company also received Rs 15 crore under the government’s Design Linked Incentive scheme. It was among the first four start-ups selected for that scheme in 2023, and it also receives support through the Chips to Start-Up programme, which gives access to design tools and academic partnerships. The sum of those amounts is a little different from the total, and the report does not explain the remainder.
The company was founded in 2020 and has its headquarters in Kerala. The chief executive and co-founder is named as Jyothis Indirabhai. The sources reviewed do not describe the number of employees or customers, so the commercial position of the chip is not known beyond the statement that mass production is planned.
The roadmap includes more chips. The report lists an R1000 AI and machine-learning microcontroller for sensors in the Internet of Things and an A4000 edge AI server chip as future products. Both are plans and not announced products with specifications.
Why does this matter? Surveillance cameras, drones and industrial sensors increasingly need chips that can run AI models. The sources do not say what share of the Indian market the company might win or what the chip costs.
There are risks that every start-up in this field faces. A chip has to be competitive in performance and price against established foreign makers, and it needs software tools and customers before it can succeed. The step from silicon bring-up to volume production is where many designs struggle, and the report does not give a date for the first commercial shipments.
The A2000 is an example of the design strength that India has in chips, and of the way government schemes and private investors are backing it, and its progress will show how far a start-up can go when manufacturing is done abroad.
Featured image: An integrated circuit chip (file photo; a stand-in image, not the A2000). Photo by Клапауций (155LA3), licensed under CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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