Primis AI today announced that it has become ChipNexus and launched NEX, an agentic AI platform for semiconductor and hardware design. The new identity reflects the company’s evolution in response to a changing market: hardware teams increasingly need AI systems that can work across complex engineering workflows, not simply generate code or answer questions. ChipNexus developed NEX to address that shift.
NEX helps hardware teams plan and execute multi-step engineering workflows across digital, analog, and physical design. It can generate and refactor RTL, analyze schematics, configure and run digital and analog simulations, investigate verification failures, and orchestrate synthesis and physical-design tools. NEX interprets outputs ranging from logs and waveforms to timing, power, and layout reports, using the results to guide subsequent actions toward defined engineering objectives. NEX connects with existing EDA environments, source code repositories, automation scripts, and CI/CD infrastructure, allowing teams to apply AI across their current toolchain rather than replace it. Engineers can work with NEX interactively through a lightweight command-line interface, delegate bounded multi-step workflows, or invoke NEX from scripts and scheduled jobs for unattended execution.
In an independent evaluation, NEX was tested across increasingly complex RTL projects, culminating in the implementation and verification of a dual-core, cache-coherent processor. On the most demanding project, NEX-assisted development, including implementation, testbench generation, verification, and iterative debugging, reduced a workload estimated at roughly 100 hours of manual effort to less than 2.5 hours. Across the evaluation, experienced designers achieved productivity improvements of up to 43x.
Alongside the rebrand and product launch, ChipNexus closed a seed funding round led by Cambium Capital. The company plans to use the funding to accelerate NEX's agent capabilities and grow enterprise adoption.
" Hardware engineers do not need another chatbot that stops at code generation. They need AI that can understand a design objective, work across the existing toolchain, and carry an engineering task through multiple stages from architecture through physical implementation. NEX is our response to that shift, and ChipNexus reflects the broader company we are building around it."
— Pierre-Emmanuel Gaillardon, Founder and President, ChipNexus
NEX is available now and includes out-of-the-box access to supported Google Gemini models. Enterprise customers can instead connect NEX to supported AI models using their own provider credentials. Private-cloud and on-premises deployment options are also available for organizations with additional security, privacy, or data-residency requirements. More information is available at https://chipnexus.ai.
About ChipNexus
ChipNexus (formerly Primis AI) builds agentic AI software for semiconductor and hardware design teams. Its flagship product, NEX, is a multi-agent automation framework that helps engineers move faster from architecture through physical design, integrating with leading commercial and open-source EDA tools. ChipNexus is headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah. For more information, visit https://chipnexus.ai.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260723625743/en/
Media gallery
