Bengaluru-based fabless semiconductor startup BigEndian Semiconductors has raised $6 million in a pre-Series A funding round led by IAN Alpha Fund. Vertex Ventures SEA and India, IvyCap Ventures, and strategic angel investors participated in the round. The company previously raised $3 million in seed funding from Vertex Ventures in August 2024.
The startup, founded in March 2024 by Sunil Kumar, Renuka Prasad, Dinesh Annayya, Kanagaraju Ponnusamy, and Jansen Cheng, develops system-on-chip (SoC) products for surveillance and CCTV applications. It operates under the Made-in-India chip mandate and plans to expand into consumer electronics, automotive, and enterprise sectors.
BigEndian will use the new capital to commercialize its first SoC, scale product engineering, and strengthen partnerships across foundries, IP ecosystems, and OEMs. The company has achieved tape-out of its first commercial chip. Sample chipsets are scheduled for unveiling by the end of this month, followed by regulatory approvals and testing. Commercial availability is expected in the third or fourth quarter of the ongoing fiscal year, initially targeting the Indian market before expanding to African, Southeast Asian, and LATAM markets.
The first SoC targets 2-5 megapixel surveillance cameras, including indoor and outdoor units, dashcams, doorbells, traffic management systems, enterprise surveillance, and residential security. It features a dual-core A53 processor and integrates hardware, software, and security elements. The company designs the SoC in India, manufactures through partners in Taiwan, licenses ARM processor cores and select physical IPs, and has developed in-house peripheral IP blocks along with a RISC-V-based security subsystem. Security features include secure boot mechanisms, protected storage, encrypted data transport, and video source authentication.
