Mastiska, a UAE based fabless semiconductor startup, has secured a 10 million dollar seed round. It was led largely by sovereign wealth funds across the GCC. The young company aims to develop sovereign silicon for AI compute. This is addressing a rising demand from regions seeking strategic autonomy in digital infrastructure.
Building Sovereign AI Hardware
Founded in 2024 by Suresh Sugumar, Mastiska develops data centre class inference accelerators designed for governments and enterprises that want to reduce reliance on U.S. and Chinese chip ecosystems. The company operates with a distributed engineering structure. Its model creation team is based in Abu Dhabi, while its VLSI design team sits in India. This structure supports a long term plan to deliver purpose built chips for sovereign customers. They will do this while maintaining efficiency across its design pipeline.
Mastiska positions itself as an alternative for markets where regulatory control, cybersecurity assurance and supply chain independence seem like as strategic priorities. To support this, the company offers full audit access to its chip designs. This will help its customers to verify cybersecurity properties at the silicon level. This level of transparency is uncommon in the global semiconductor industry and reflects Mastiska’s focus on high trust markets.
Focused Expansion Across the Global South
The startup’s target markets span the GCC, South Asia, Southeast Asia, BRICS and other regions across the Global South. These markets are actively investing in local AI ecosystems and want alternatives to the large technology suppliers that dominate the global chip market. Mastiska’s leadership has stated that it does not aim to compete directly in the U.S. China race for AI hardware dominance. Instead, the company hopes to build a strategic niche for markets seeking autonomy over their AI infrastructure.
First Product: Deployable FPGA Accelerators
Mastiska is preparing to launch its first commercial product. The initial release will be custom FPGA cards equipped with the company’s proprietary intellectual property. These cards are not intended as early test units but as deployable accelerators for real inference workloads. The plan is to use FPGA based accelerators as a bridge toward future custom AI chips that Mastiska will develop using open source technologies.
In parallel, the company’s model team is working on brain inspired architectures. This includes advanced approaches such as modified transformer models that promise better performance and efficiency. These innovations look to shape the hardware roadmap and help the company align silicon design with new advances in AI model structure.
A Path Toward Sovereign Silicon
Mastiska’s new funding gives the company momentum as it works to build one of the region’s first sovereign AI chip platforms. By combining transparent design, regional engineering talent and a market strategy that supports strategic autonomy, Mastiska is positioning itself to serve countries that want full control over their AI stack.