India’s Semiconductor Ambition Takes Flight with EdgeQ’s Unified 5G and AI Chip Platform

Visionary Leadership and Talent Strategy

When former Qualcomm executive Vinay Ravuri established EdgeQ in 2018, he envisioned disrupting the wireless infrastructure market dominated by a few global players. Recognizing the limitations of proprietary systems, Ravuri saw an opportunity to democratize chip design through open standards. “The wireless chip market had become stagnant with limited innovation,” Ravuri observed. “We believed that by leveraging open architecture, we could bring fresh thinking to this complex space.”

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EdgeQ’s global talent acquisition strategy emerged organically rather than through deliberate planning. “Our philosophy was simple: hire the best engineers regardless of location,” Ravuri explained. This approach naturally led to establishing significant engineering centers across India, particularly in Bengaluru, where many team members had previously worked at industry giants like Qualcomm and Intel. The COVID-19 pandemic further validated their distributed model, enabling seamless collaboration across India, the United States, and Europe.

Technical Innovation: Unifying 5G and AI on Single Chip

EdgeQ’s groundbreaking achievement lies in creating what the company claims is India’s first unified 5G and AI System-on-Chip (SoC). Hariprasad Gangadharan, VP and Head of Silicon Engineering, emphasized the significance: “We’re among the very few startups globally building a complete 5G SoC from scratch, and the only one originating from India with this capability.”, as earlier coverage

The innovation centers around a fundamental mathematical insight: both 5G signal processing and AI computations rely on matrix mathematics. “We use configurable multipliers that can perform either 5G baseband computations or AI matrix multiplications,” Gangadharan explained. “By zeroing out the imaginary components in complex number matrices used for 5G, the same hardware can execute AI dot-product operations.”

The architecture includes multiple specialized components:, according to technology insights

• Tensor Execution Units (TXU) for mathematical operations
• Forward Error Correction blocks compliant with 3GPP standards
• Security and crypto accelerators for data protection
• Custom instruction sets for packet processing and real-time scheduling
• ARM CPUs and RISC-V cores for software programmability

Manufacturing Excellence and Verification

EdgeQ approached chip manufacturing with rigorous verification processes that yielded impressive results. “We delivered silicon with zero metal-mask fixes post-tape-out,” Gangadharan revealed proudly. The achievement came through extensive modeling, emulation, and software-hardware co-verification using SystemC models and FPGA-based emulation to validate performance under real traffic conditions., according to additional coverage

The company employs a Customer-Owned Tooling (COT) model while collaborating with industry leaders including Synopsys and Cadence for design tools, TSMC for foundry services, and various OSAT partners for packaging and testing.

Business Model and Market Strategy

EdgeQ targets high-volume segments within wireless infrastructure, with particular focus on indoor and outdoor small cells, open RAN deployments, and satellite communications. “Indoor private 5G networks represent a massive opportunity,” Ravuri noted. “While there are approximately one million cell towers globally, the potential indoor locations number in the tens of millions, similar to Wi-Fi access points.”, according to industry reports

The company’s revenue model includes chip sales bundled with base software, with additional licensing fees for advanced features like AI functionality or simultaneous 4G+5G operation. Maintenance contracts provide ongoing revenue through updates and bug fixes throughout the chip’s five- to seven-year lifecycle.

Funding and Industry Recognition

EdgeQ has secured substantial backing from global investors, including Threshold Ventures, known for early investments in Tesla and SpaceX. The startup has raised $126 million across three funding rounds, including a $75 million Series B in April 2023. The company’s advisory board features former Qualcomm executives Paul Jacobs and Matt Grob, adding industry credibility and strategic guidance.

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Industry recognition has followed technological achievement, with EdgeQ earning a place on EE Times’ prestigious “100 Silicon Startups to Watch” list for three consecutive years.

Future Roadmap and Challenges

Despite technological successes, EdgeQ faces the typical challenges of disrupting an established market. “The 5G market evolution has been slower than anticipated,” Ravuri acknowledged. “While initially focused on smartphone connectivity, we’re now seeing growing traction in private networks and industrial automation.”

The company’s future roadmap includes extending its unified platform toward 6G standards, enhancing AI integration, and developing scalable multi-chip configurations. “Technically, our current architecture could support 6G software, but we anticipate developing new hardware to leverage performance improvements,” Ravuri explained.

Gangadharan emphasized India’s growing role in the company’s strategy: “India has become our hub for design, verification, and software development. We’re committed to scaling production and advancing AI capabilities on our unified platform.”

EdgeQ represents a significant milestone in India’s semiconductor ambitions, demonstrating that the country can compete in advanced chip design against global incumbents. As Ravuri concluded: “Transformative technologies typically take about a decade to reach inflection points. We believe we’re approaching that moment where our vision becomes mainstream reality.”

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