ChipNexus NEX Agentic Chip Design Automation

ChipNexus, Inc., formerly Primis AI and known for the RapidGPT assistant for FPGA design, is a Delaware corporation operating from Utah. It applies agentic AI to semiconductor and hardware development, moving beyond code generation to multi-step engineering workflows from architecture to GDSII.

NEX is a multi-agent reasoning framework with task, domain and manager agents. It generates and refactors RTL, analyses schematics, runs digital and analog simulations, investigates verification failures and orchestrates synthesis and physical-design tools. It connects to Cadence, Synopsys and Siemens EDA tools, AMD, Intel and Lattice FPGA suites and open-source flows such as OpenROAD and Yosys, and can run interactively through a CLI or unattended from scripts and CI/CD pipelines.

• Multi-agent orchestration: task, domain and manager agents coordinate work across the pre-silicon flow.
• RTL generation and refactoring: self-verifying RTL generation in Verilog and VHDL using EDA tool feedback.
• Simulation and debug: configures digital and analog simulations and investigates verification failures.
• Implementation orchestration: drives synthesis and physical-design tools through TCL and standard formats.
• Broad tool support: Cadence, Synopsys, Siemens, Vivado, Quartus, Radiant, OpenROAD, Yosys and Verilator.
• Flexible deployment: hosted plans, private cloud on AWS Bedrock or Vertex AI, or air-gapped on-premises.

A Vietnamese FPGA design house can use NEX to generate and fix RTL and drive Vivado or Quartus runs for customer projects. A university chip design lab can combine NEX with OpenROAD and Yosys for teaching and research tape-outs. A fabless startup can use the air-gapped option to automate synthesis and timing closure while protecting IP.

In an independent evaluation cited by the company, a dual-core cache-coherent processor project estimated at about 100 hours of manual work was completed in under 2.5 hours, with productivity gains of up to 43x. Existing EDA tools and repositories stay in place. A Professional plan at USD 200 per month lowers the entry barrier for small teams, while enterprise options keep source code in-house.

Chip design tools are shifting from AI chat assistants to agents that execute bounded multi-step workflows inside existing EDA environments. Subscription pricing makes such tools reachable for small fabless teams and FPGA developers. Vietnam's growing pool of chip design startups, FPGA engineers and university labs can benefit from lower-cost automation.

Formerly Primis AI (RapidGPT); renamed ChipNexus in July 2026. Delaware corporation operating in Utah (West Jordan); the July 2026 release names Salt Lake City as headquarters. Co-founders: Prof. Pierre-Emmanuel Gaillardon (President) and Dr. Valerio Tenace (CTO); CEO Dan Elmhurst. Investors: Cambium Capital (seed lead), Doorga Capital and The Raptor Group.