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Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitchesFind Drivers →UAE-based Mastiṣka announced a $10 million seed round in November 2025 to develop AI inference hardware, beginning with a planned FPGA accelerator card and aiming later for a RISC-V-based ASIC. The announcement describes a roadmap, not a shipped product: the reporting does not name the investors or provide independent performance results.
What Mastiṣka announced
EE Times reported on 25 November 2025 that Mastiṣka raised $10 million in seed funding, mainly from sovereign wealth funds in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). CEO Suresh Sugumar said the funding would support data-center-class inference accelerators and a UAE-based fabless semiconductor company using open-source technologies. The report did not identify the funds. A secondary report published two days later described the same round and broad plans.
The company’s proposition is that countries seeking sovereign AI should control the silicon as well as the data. Sugumar said sovereign customers would have full access to audit the design for cybersecurity purposes. That is a company-stated offer; the reporting does not establish the audit process, its scope, or any security outcome.
What the product roadmap includes
First: an FPGA accelerator card
The first product described is a custom PCIe FPGA card loaded with Mastiṣka intellectual property, based on Altera Agilex-7M and intended to support up to 96 GB of high-bandwidth memory (HBM). EE Times stated that Altera’s own Agilex-7M cards had 32 GB HBM; the proposed Mastiṣka configuration is a reported plan, not a verified shipping specification.
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Sugumar said the cards were meant for commercial deployment rather than only prototyping. The interview provided no price, ship date, independent test, or benchmark, so it does not establish how the card performs against GPUs or other accelerators.
What the reported demo does—and does not—show
EE Times said a Mastiṣka FPGA demo could run DeepSeek-7B “pretty slowly.” Sugumar described a possible trade-off in which a workload might use more FPGAs and rack space than it would with GPUs. The report gives no measurements or reproducible comparison. It therefore cannot support conclusions about relative throughput, cost, energy use, or performance advantage.
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Later: a RISC-V-based ASIC
The next phase Sugumar outlined was a RISC-V-based application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) using a neuromorphic-inspired digital approach based on parallelization. In November 2025, he said Mastiṣka aimed to tape out in roughly three years, allowing time for its intellectual property to mature. This was a forward-looking target, not confirmation of a completed tape-out or a guaranteed delivery date.
Software and models
Mastiṣka also said it was working on brain-inspired models, including modified transformers, while its software team pursued CUDA compatibility. The reporting does not show that compatibility is complete or establish model performance or energy efficiency.
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- Supports Linux and Windows.
Who the company says it is targeting
Sugumar identified prospective markets in other GCC countries, Southeast Asia—including India—and other BRICS and Global South markets. He said Mastiṣka was not targeting the United States or China, which he described as having their own competing sovereign-chip programs. These are intended markets, not disclosed signed customers.
EE Times reported that the team had around 40 people at the time of the November 2025 interview, with model creation in Abu Dhabi and a VLSI team in India. Startup Researcher reported that Mastiṣka was founded in 2024. These are dated reported details, not a verified current headcount or present-day office map.
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Funding, revenue expectations, and what remains unconfirmed
Sugumar said one investor required a 60-person office in a GCC country; the report did not name the investor or country. He also expected FPGA-based servers to generate revenue while the chip design matured. That is a forecast, not evidence that Mastiṣka has already earned revenue.
For readers weighing the significance of the round, the distinction is between capital raised and product validation. The reported funding supports a stated development plan, but the available coverage does not name investors, identify signed customers, establish that accelerator cards have shipped, or report independent benchmarks.
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Quick Recap
Sources
- EE Times, 25 November 2025: funding, roadmap, technical plans, and CEO statements.
- Startup Researcher, 27 November 2025: secondary coverage of the funding and company plans.
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