Openchip taps Baya Systems data-movement platform for RISC-V systems

Semiconductor fabric intellectual property company Baya Systems Inc. today announced that European chip and artificial intelligence systems firm Openchip & Software Technologies S.L. has licensed its data-movement platform and network-on-chip fabric technology to develop intelligent compute systems for next-generation artificial intelligence workloads.

Under the partnership, Openchip will use Baya’s WeaveIP unified fabric to develop intelligent compute systems and its WeaverPro FabricStudio platform to design and optimize complex RISC-V-based multi-chiplet systems. The deal extends Baya’s push into Europe, following the opening of a U.K. office in Cambridge earlier this year.

Baya, based in Santa Clara, California, makes software-driven, chiplet-ready fabric IP that handles the movement of data between memory and compute. Barcelona-based Openchip develops RISC-V accelerators, infrastructure hardware and software for AI and high-performance computing, with a stated focus on digital sovereignty.

The problem Baya and Openchip are going after is data movement. Modern AI and high-performance computing chips are limited less by how fast they can compute than by how quickly they can shuttle data between memory and processors, a constraint engineers call the memory wall. Baya’s argument is that chip designers wait too long to deal with it, bolting interconnect onto a design late instead of building around it from the start.

Its platforms let Openchip test how data moves through a chip in software before any silicon is fabricated. That lets the company catch problems early, when fixing them is cheap and tune for power and performance before committing to a physical design. The companies also pitched the deal as a bet on the open RISC-V instruction set, which lets Openchip build customized accelerators without the licensing constraints or royalties of proprietary architectures.

“The fundamental challenges facing AI hardware today, scalability, thermal efficiency and uncompromised performance, cannot be solved if interconnect is treated as an afterthought,” said Baya founder and Chief Executive Sailesh Kumar. “The communication layer between memory and compute is the critical connective tissue of the AI stack.”

Openchip CEO Cesc Guim said Baya’s platform gives his company the architectural foundation it needs to deliver scalable computing systems and welcomed Baya’s expanding presence in Europe.

The agreement comes as both companies expand. Baya is evaluating sites for its first office in the European Union to support a growing customer base in the region, having opened the Cambridge office earlier this year. Openchip is scaling out from its Barcelona headquarters and now operates across six European countries: Spain, Italy, Poland, France, Germany and Ireland.

Baya raised $36 million in a Series B round in January 2025 led by Maverick Silicon, with a strategic investment from Synopsys Inc. and participation from existing backers Matrix Partners and Intel Capital. That round brought the company’s total funding to about $47 million.

Image: Baya Systems