Ubitium is Building the First Universal Processor for Physical AI
Ubitium, the semiconductor startup building a universal processor for machines that perceive, think, and act in the real world, led by Hyun Shin Cho, Martin Vorbach, Peter W Weber, and the team, has raised $14 million in new seed funding led by Ibex Investors, with participation from OpenOcean, existing investors including KBC Focus Fund, Runa Capital, and Inflection, and Florian Seibel, co-founder and co-CEO of European defence technology company Quantum Systems, investing personally. It brings Ubitium’s total seed funding to $18 million since the company was founded in 2024.
Ubitium is developing a universal processor that combines signal processing, AI inference, and real-time control to power autonomous machines, replacing stacks of specialised chips. The funding follows the successful return of its first silicon, taped out just one year after the company’s founding.
A New Era of Computing Needs a New Processor.
Physical AI is powering machines such as robots, drones, and autonomous vehicles, a market McKinsey projects could reach $370 billion by 2040.
Today, these machines rely on separate processors for sensing, AI, and control, increasing complexity and data-transfer overhead. Ubitium is developing a universal processor with programmable elements that dynamically allocate resources across all three tasks, adapting to changing workloads on a single chip.
“Physical AI machines bring a whole new set of computing challenges, and the inference isn’t the hardest one,” said Hyun Shin Cho, CEO and co-founder of Ubitium. “Sensing the real world and controlling the machine in it are just as hard, and today those still run on separate chips. We built one Physical AI processor that does all three, proved it in silicon in a year, and this funding turns it into a product.”
Ubitium’s team combines decades of reconfigurable computing expertise, 17 granted patents, and experience from Intel, Nvidia, Apple, and Texas Instruments. Led by CTO and co-founder Martin Vorbach, the company is developing a universal processor designed to adapt to the changing demands of Physical AI.
Its architecture combines unified memory with standard RISC-V tools, reducing chip-to-chip data transfers and software complexity. The goal is to make intelligent machines more cost-effective while providing a reusable computing platform across products.
Proven in Silicon.
Ubitium’s first chip, the UB108, features 256 processing elements manufactured on Samsung’s 8nm process. It has demonstrated signal processing, AI inference, and real-time control on a single reconfigurable array.
The company plans to tape out its first commercial processor, the UB410, with 4,096 processing elements, and deliver evaluation units in 2027. Initial target markets include high-resolution radar and audio systems that combine signal processing and AI on one chip, followed by autonomous systems such as drones requiring an integrated perceive, think, and act capability.
Why Invest in Ubitium.
“An autonomous machine operating in the real world must keep working when communications are unavailable. It has to process its surroundings, make decisions and control itself on board, within strict limits on power and weight,” said Florian Seibel, co-founder and co-CEO of Quantum Systems. “Today that means integrating a stack of chips that were not designed to work together, and every one of them costs weight, power and integration time we don’t have. Ubitium is building the one processor that does that whole job. That’s why I invested.”
“The pace of AI is only increasing, far exceeding the ability of hardware to keep up and manage,” said Jeffrey Peters, Partner at Ibex Investors. “Ubitium solves this with a universal reconfigurable architecture that can deploy the latest advances on a single piece of silicon with a single set of development tools. Ubitium is truly hardware at the pace of software.”
“AI is moving from our screens into the physical world, but tomorrow’s intelligent machines can’t run on a patchwork of repurposed chips,” said Tom Henriksson, General Partner at OpenOcean. “Physical AI requires a ground-up hardware revolution. Ubitium’s team has spent decades building exactly that architecture, and with the technology now in silicon they have created the foundational processor for this new era. We’re proud to back them.”
“When we first invested, Ubitium’s universal processor was a bold bet. First silicon in a single year turned that bet into proof,” said Rudi Severijns, Investment Director at KBC Focus Fund. “We’re proud to keep backing the team, and we look forward to working with Ibex Investors and OpenOcean as Ubitium brings one processor for Physical AI to market.”
“Since getting to know Hyun Shin and Martin in the beginning of 2024 and being the first check in, they’ve delivered astonishing results. Everything they bet on regarding the market of physical AI systems has come true, and they’re uniquely positioned to deliver compute and intelligence to a huge part of the market: from drones to humanoids. We’re thrilled to join new and existing investors in this round,” said Jonatan Luther-Bergquist, General Partner, Inflection.
