India may have arrived late to the AI chip race, but a new generation of startups is finding its opening in edge artificial intelligence. At the Semicon India 2026 conference in New Delhi this month, startup Atomo showed a circuit board that lets cameras and machines spot fires, count people and identify factory defects without sending data to the cloud.

“You don’t require the internet or cloud. What happens in your premises stays in your premises,” said Atomo’s Pratik Parmar. The board currently relies on a US-designed Amlogic chip, chosen three years ago when Indian alternatives were not mature enough.

That is changing. Under a government chip-design programme, 105 startups and small businesses have received advanced design tools and produced about 35 chip designs ready for manufacturing, according to the electronics ministry.

Thiruvananthapuram-based Netrasemi’s flagship A2000, built on a 12nm process at TSMC, has reached silicon bring-up. IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has called it India’s first edge AI SoC. The company, backed by around Rs 125 crore from Zoho and Unicorn India Ventures, targets commercial volumes in 2027.