McLaren Strategic Ventures (MSV) has launched a semiconductor design vertical Atlas Silicon. A startup focused-investment firm founded by Sajan Pillai in 2020, it has plans to start hiring 100 artificial intelligence-focused software engineers by March in India with planned investment of around Rs 100 crore.
The California-based McLaren Strategic Ventures has primarily four arms - business acceleration, business and domain consulting, internal IP and McLaren Capital. Its publicly-traded arm McLaren Technology Acquisition Corporation is a USD 200 million India-focused SPAC (special purpose acquisition vehicle) which was listed on the Nasdaq last November after a USD 201 million IPO.
Through its investment arm Season Two Ventures, McLaren has pumped in over Rs 100 crore into eight startups including Warehouse Now, Aerchain, Ambee, 4BaseCare, Uvik and Twixor and is also looking at a large acquisition.
On the chip design venture, Pillai, the founder-chairman and chief executive, said that they are in discussions with various Southern states to finalise the location for Atlas Silicon and will begin hiring engineers by March.
He expects Atlas Silicon, which will be an AI-based chip design venture, to become a USD 300-million business by the turn of 2025. It seeks to revolutionise the global semiconductor industry, which has been facing a lot of challenges since the pandemic hit supply chains, leading to a crisis in a host of industries like automobiles and cellphones.
The chip, according to Pillai, will be an application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) design maker and will develop the integrated circuit for a particular purpose or application. An ASIC will boost performance because the desired feature is specifically designed and is highly customised to deliver superior performance in specific applications.
Pillai further said the recently announced national semiconductor policy and other favourable initiatives such as the production-linked incentive scheme will go a long way to deepen the local manufacturing base and create immense opportunities in the segment.
