BigEndian Semiconductors bags USD 6 Mn in IAN Alpha Fund-led round

BigEndian Semiconductors, a fabless semiconductor startup, has raised USD 6 million in a round led by IAN Alpha Fund, with participation from Vertex Ventures SEA & India, IvyCap Ventures, and strategic angel investors.

Before this round, the company had raised around USD 3 million from Vertex Ventures and angel investors, including Waveform and Forward Slash.

BigEndian Semiconductors was founded in 2024 by a team of six industry veterans led by CEO Sunil Kumar. The startup aspires to build locally designed secure and high-performance System-on-Chips (SoCs) for global applications. With headquarters in Bengaluru, the company also has strategic partnerships across Taiwan and India. 

The company says it will deploy fresh funding towards commercialising its first SoC, scaling product engineering, and strengthening partnerships across foundries, IP ecosystems, and OEMs. 

BigEndian competes with firms such as Netrasemi and L&T (which have announced initiatives in this space), and globally it competes with firms like Ambarella, Novatek, Augentix, and Kneron.

Tapping into Surveillance Cameras 

BigEndian’s SoC is a value chip, catering to 2-5MP with dual core A53 core for indoor and outdoor cameras along with dashcams and doorbells. It can also be deployed across traffic management systems, enterprise surveillance, and residential security.

“Our current SoC is designed as a high-value, performance-efficient chip targeting the most widely deployed camera segment globally – 2 to 5 megapixel devices. It integrates a dual-core A53 processor, enabling reliable compute performance for both indoor and outdoor surveillance use cases,” cofounder & CEO Kumar tells Entrepreneur India. 

Kumar notes that their SoC distinguishes itself from the rest by focusing on optimisation. 

“Instead of treating hardware, software, and security as separate layers, we design them together, enabling better performance efficiency, lower latency, and improved reliability. This integrated approach ensures that customers get more predictable performance in real-world deployments compared to conventional, modular chip designs,” he added. 

Local, Global & Security

According to the cofounder, the SoC has been architected and designed in India by their in-house engineering teams. These chips are manufactured through partners in Taiwan.

“At the same time, like most fabless semiconductor companies globally, we adopt a hybrid approach, licensing certain components such as ARM processor cores and select physical IPs, while building differentiated capabilities in-house. We have also incorporated a RISC-V-based security subsystem to strengthen control and trust at the silicon level,” he explained.

As far as security is concerned, Kumar adds that the company has developed several critical peripheral IP blocks internally, particularly around system integration and security.

The security in the silicon architecture includes secure boot mechanisms, protected storage, and encrypted data transport, ensuring that the system is secure from the moment it powers on to the point where data is transmitted or stored. Moreover, it has secure methods of authenticating the source of video data, which is increasingly critical in surveillance applications where data integrity and provenance matter. 

“By designing security from the ground up, rather than as an afterthought, we significantly reduce the attack surface,” he said.

The cofounder also pointed out that the company has consciously built an ecosystem around “trusted and non-China” supply chains to align with global and domestic requirements around security and reliability. 

It may be recalled that the US President Donald Trump earlier this year blocked US photonics firm HieFo Corp’s $3 million acquisition of assets in New Jersey-based aerospace and defense specialist Emcore, citing national security and China-related concerns. China-based chips/equipment have come under scanner around the world over concerns of backdoor and possible misuse in the future.

“From a localisation perspective, India is still at a nascent stage in terms of its  semiconductor manufacturing ecosystem, not just fabs, but also critical components such as sensors, lenses, power modules, and I/O systems. While we are actively monitoring and supporting ecosystem development, meaningful localisation will require coordinated progress across the entire value chain,” he added.

What’s next?

As mentioned above, the company will use the funds to conduct product certification, field trials, and early-stage commercial production. It will also conduct an exercise with their customers on field deployments to fine-tune performance and reliability. 

While the company is extensively focusing it also aims to initiate small-volume production runs. In-the longer team, according to the founder, it will soon build a robust product portfolio and expand into global markets

Over the next financial year, the cofounder says, the focus is on transitioning from successful tape-out to commercial deployments, with a strong emphasis on the Indian market. This includes deepening engagements with OEM partners, scaling initial production, and ensuring product reliability in real-world use cases. 

“At this stage, given the nature of semiconductor product cycles, it is still early to precisely estimate business outcomes until we complete commercial deployments and see consistent adoption,” he added.

In the longer-term, the startup aspires to build a robust product portfolio and expand into global markets, positioning itself as a trusted provider of secure, high-performance silicon for intelligent edge applications.