Many of these startups are finding momentum this year due to the fast-moving nature of AI development creating an arms race for companies to develop groundbreaking silicon solutions that can solve existing bottlenecks and unlock new levels of performance.
www.crn.com, Jun. 27, 2025 –
The semiconductor industry is poised for growth this year and well into the future, and it’s no wonder given continuously high demand for AI computing infrastructure alone.
Global consulting firm Deloitte said semiconductor industry sales are on track to hit a record $697 million this year, and that figure could reach $1 trillion by 2030, which translates into a compound annual growth rate of 7.5 percent for the next several years.
While Nvidia, Intel and AMD command a significant amount of spending for semiconductor products such as CPUs and GPUs, the fast-moving nature of AI development has created an arms race for a much wider field of companies, including startups, to develop groundbreaking silicon solutions that can solve existing bottlenecks and unlock new levels of performance.
There are several semiconductor startups finding momentum in 2025 for this very reason, but their technologies, products and business models vary, ranging from an optical interconnect chiplet that can be integrated into processor designs to “maximize AI infrastructure performance and efficiency,” to PCIe-based accelerator cards that are built for high-performance PCs.
Then there are startups solving other important problems, like accelerating big data analytics or enabling silicon-based root of trust for increased security.
What follows are CRN’s 10 hottest semiconductor startups of 2025 so far, which include optical interconnect providers like Ayar Labs and Celestial AI, networking and connectivity vendors like Cornelis Networks and Xsight Labs as well as AI chip designers like Axelera AI and Tenstorrent.