Your Challenge:
AI-Native Chip Design
COMPRESSING CHIP DESIGN FROM YEARS TO WEEKS
Artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping every sector, from medicine and mobility to energy and data security. What is considered an innovation today becomes standard tomorrow. The pace of development accelerates week after week.
Yet, while the AI landscape transforms on a daily basis, hardware is failing to keep up. The chips meant to power our AI systems are designed for yesterday's models. The scaling rules that defined semiconductor development for decades no longer apply. Instead, the path of innovation is shifting toward novel approaches and visionary architectures beyond legacy systems.
The opportunity: Emerging AI models and open-source technologies are lowering entry barriers, enabling design possibilities that were unthinkable just a short time ago. The innovation space is expanding. That is why we are convinced: Now is the time for a strategic fresh start in chip design – Made in Europe.
A collaborative project by the European innovation agencies SPRIND and NADI (National Agency for Disruptive Innovation), which is currently being established in the Netherlands.
The goal of this Challenge is to leverage AI to drastically shorten the design process of high-performance chips and develop concrete, production-ready chip designs tailored for AI applications.
From architecture search to RTL generation and verification, AI systems are expected to autonomously drive and optimize the development workflow. Reinforcement learning and autonomous agent systems will enable independent decision-making across complex design trade-offs, compressing timelines from years to weeks. AI becomes the actual chip designer.
We are calling for high-performance, energy-efficient chip architectures built specifically for the demands of AI Giga-Factories and European core strengths such as data security, biotechnology, robotics, and mobility. The goal is to set new benchmarks in compute power, energy efficiency, and scalability.
The Challenge spans 20 months across two stages. A jury of recognized experts supports SPRIND and NADI in selecting and evaluating the participating teams.
SPRIND and NADI provide financial backing in the form of individual fixed-price contracts based on team cost estimates, offering up to €9,600,000 per team across both stages. In Stage 1 (8 months) up to €2.6M per team and in Stage 2 (12 months) up to €7.0M per team. To help teams reach their full potential, SPRIND and NADI offer additional support throughout the entire Challenge duration, facilitating access to potential collaboration partners and experts. Following Stage 2, outstanding teams will be targeted for follow-on funding in the tens of millions of euros to enable the execution of their developed designs during the tape-out phase. Specific details regarding potential follow-on funding will be announced at a later date.
Detailed information can be found in the call for submission and the participation agreement.
The application period runs until November 30, 2026, at 11:00 (CET). All applications submitted by this deadline will be considered.
Learn more about the AI-Native Chip Design Challenge in our webinars. The following dates are scheduled: October 9, 2026, from 4:00 PM to 5:30 PM (CEST) and November 17, 2026, from 4:00 PM to 5:30 PM (CET). Further details will follow shortly. Follow our LinkedIn channel for regular updates.
Do you have questions about the Challenge? Contact us at challenge@sprind.org.
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