UAE-based fabless semiconductor startup Mastiska has successfully closed a $10 million seed funding round, backed primarily by sovereign wealth funds from across the GCC. The investment will accelerate the company’s mission to develop data-centre-class inference accelerators and establish the UAE as a hub for sovereign silicon built on open-source technologies.
Founded in 2024 by Suresh Sugumar, Mastiska is strategically positioning itself to address the growing global demand for technological independence in the artificial intelligence sector.
Building Sovereign Silicon from the Ground Up
At the core of Mastiska’s strategy is the principle that true sovereign AI begins with sovereign silicon. The new capital will be used to advance its technology stack and build AI hardware tailored for nations seeking to reduce dependency on U.S. and Chinese suppliers.
The company operates a distributed model, with its model-creation team based in Abu Dhabi and its VLSI (Very Large-Scale Integration) design and engineering team located in India. To build trust and ensure security, Mastiska plans to provide its sovereign customers with full audit access to its chip designs, offering a critical layer of cybersecurity assurance.
A Strategy Beyond the US-China Tech Race
Mastiska is intentionally steering clear of direct competition in the saturated U.S. and Chinese markets. Instead, the startup is targeting sovereign customers across the UAE, the wider GCC, Southeast Asia, BRICS nations, and the Global South.
This focus caters to a growing consortium of countries aiming to build strategic autonomy over their critical AI infrastructure, ensuring their digital ecosystems are not reliant on foreign technology stacks.
Go-to-Market with Commercial-Grade Hardware
The company’s first commercial product will be custom FPGA (Field-Programmable Gate Array) cards integrated with Mastiska’s proprietary IP. These are designed not as prototypes but as immediately deployable accelerators for demanding AI inference workloads in data centres.
In parallel, Mastiska’s model team is developing innovative, brain-inspired architectures, including modified transformers designed to deliver significant improvements in performance and energy efficiency for next-generation AI applications.
About Mastiska
Founded in 2024, Mastiska is a UAE-based fabless semiconductor startup focused on sovereign AI hardware. The company builds data-center-grade inference accelerators and next-generation AI chips to serve global markets seeking technological independence, including the GCC, South Asia, BRICS, and the Global South.
Source: Wamda
