Quadric is a chip-IP startup founded by veterans of early bitcoin-mining firm 21E6. The company is turning a sharp rise in licensing revenue into a $30 million Series C that will help it expand beyond automotive into laptops, printers, and sovereign-AI markets.
At a Glance
- Quadric sees a surge in licensing revenue, jumping from $4 million in 2024 to $15-20 million in 2025.
- The company has just closed a $30 million Series C, raising total funding to $72 million.
- With a post-money valuation now between $270 million and $300 million, Quadric is positioning itself as a key player in on-device AI.
Why it matters: Quadric’s technology could shift the AI industry from cloud-centric models to local, sovereign deployments, reducing infrastructure costs and boosting data privacy.
Funding and Growth
Quadric posted $15-20 million in licensing revenue in 2025, up from around $4 million in 2024, CEO Veerbhan Kheterpal told News Of Philadelphia in an interview. The company announced last week a $30 million Series C round led by ACCELERATE Fund, managed by BEENEXT Capital Management, bringing its total funding to $72 million. That growth has buoyed the company, which now has a post-money valuation of between $270 million and $300 million, up from around $100 million in its 2022 Series B, Kheterpal said.
From Cars to Laptops
Quadric began in automotive, where on-device AI can power real-time functions like driver assistance. Kheterpal said the spread of transformer-based models in 2023 pushed inference into “everything,” creating a sharp business inflection over the past 18 months as more companies try to run AI locally rather than rely on the cloud. The first products based on Quadric’s technology are expected to ship this year, beginning with laptops, Kheterpal told News Of Philadelphia. Its customer list already spans printers, cars, and AI laptops, including Kyocera and Japan’s auto supplier Denso, which builds chips for Toyota vehicles.
Sovereign AI and Global Reach
Quadric is now looking beyond traditional commercial deployments and into markets exploring “sovereign AI” strategies to reduce reliance on U.S.-based infrastructure. The startup is exploring customers in India and Malaysia, Kheterpal said, and counts Moglix CEO Rahul Garg as a strategic investor helping shape its India “sovereign” approach. Quadric employs nearly 70 people worldwide, including about 40 in the U.S. and around 10 in India.
Technology and Competitive Edge
Unlike Nvidia, Quadric does not make chips itself. Instead, it licenses programmable AI processor IP, which Kheterpal described as a “blueprint” that customers can embed into their own silicon, along with a software stack and toolchain to run models, including vision and voice, on-device. “We were looking to build a similar CUDA-like or programmable infrastructure for on-device AI,” Kheterpal said. The programmable approach allows customers to support new AI models through software updates rather than redesigning hardware, giving an advantage in an industry where chip development can take years while model architectures shift in a matter of months.
Quadric is pitching itself as an alternative to chip vendors such as Qualcomm, which typically uses its AI technology inside its own processors, as well as IP suppliers like Synopsys and Cadence, which sell neural processing engine blocks. Kheterpal said Qualcomm’s approach can lock customers into its own silicon, while traditional IP suppliers offer engine blocks that many customers find difficult to program.
Challenges and Outlook
Still, Quadric remains early in its buildout, with a handful of signed customers so far and much of its longer-term upside dependent on turning today’s licensing deals into high-volume shipments and recurring royalties. The World Economic Forum pointed to this shift in a recent article, as AI inference moves closer to users and away from purely centralized architectures. Similarly, EY said in a November report that the sovereign AI approach has gained traction as policymakers and industry groups push for domestic AI capabilities spanning compute, models, and data, rather than relying entirely on foreign infrastructure.
Kheterpal said the push is being driven by the rising cost of centralized AI infrastructure and the difficulty many countries face in building hyperscale data centers. That has prompted more interest in “distributed AI” setups where inference runs on laptops or small on-premise servers inside offices rather than relying on cloud-based services for every query.
Key Takeaways
- Quadric’s $30 million Series C and rising licensing revenue signal strong momentum.
- The company’s on-device AI IP is designed to keep pace with rapidly evolving models through software updates.
- Quadric’s focus on sovereign AI positions it to tap markets that want to reduce reliance on U.S. infrastructure.
- Early-stage customers and high-volume shipments will determine whether the company can convert licensing revenue into recurring royalties.
Event
San Francisco | October 13-15, 2026
