World Bank's IFC Backs Quadric to Bridge AI's Digital Divide

BURLINGAME, CA – July 15, 2026 – AI chip licensor Quadric has announced the second close of its Series C funding round, bringing the total to $46 million and the company's total capital raised to an impressive $90 million. The round was led by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector investment arm of the World Bank Group, marking a significant strategic move to accelerate the deployment of Quadric's programmable on-device AI platform and challenge the dominance of cloud-based hyperscalers.

This capital infusion is earmarked to expand support for the company's existing customer base in automotive and AI PCs while aggressively pursuing new frontiers in humanoid robotics, wearables, and advanced networking. More than just a financial milestone, the IFC's involvement signals a powerful endorsement of Quadric's potential to democratize AI, particularly in emerging markets where access to powerful computing has been a significant barrier to innovation.

A Strategic Play for Global AI Equity

The IFC's decision to lead the round—its first-ever investment in an AI chip company—is a clear statement of intent. The development institution, which has committed over $3 billion to technology ventures in emerging markets, views Quadric's technology as a critical tool for closing the global digital divide.

"Quadric addresses one of the most important structural gaps in the AI ecosystem today," said Mohamed Eissa, Chief Investment Officer at IFC. "Powerful AI cannot remain the exclusive domain of hyperscalers if emerging markets are going to close the digital divide. Quadric's programmable architecture fundamentally changes the economics: SMEs in emerging markets can now deploy AI on devices they own, without the per-token cloud bills that price them out."

Eissa's statement cuts to the heart of a major challenge in global AI adoption. While large enterprises can afford the steep and often unpredictable costs of cloud-based AI processing, smaller businesses are frequently sidelined. By enabling powerful AI models to run directly on a device, Quadric's architecture eliminates this dependency, offering a path to technological sovereignty. This shift not only levels the economic playing field but also fosters local talent. As Eissa noted, "building this class of efficient, programmable chips creates exactly the kind of high-value semiconductor and AI engineering talent that emerging markets like India need to compete globally." This aligns with reports that the IFC was considering an investment specifically to expand Quadric's R&D operations in India, underscoring a commitment to building local ecosystems.

The 'Living Silicon' Challenging Hardware Norms

At the core of Quadric's value proposition is its Chimera General-Purpose Neural Processor Unit (GPNPU). Unlike conventional, fixed-function Neural Processing Units (NPUs) that are designed for specific AI models and quickly become obsolete, Quadric's architecture is fully programmable. This allows a single chip to adapt to new and more complex AI models long after it has been manufactured.

"A chip feature set is locked years before it ships, and AI models change every few months, so an operator-centric, fixed-function NPU arrives behind the models and only falls further back," explained Veerbhan Kheterpal, CEO and co-founder of Quadric. "Quadric is a living platform: because the stack is software, the same chip runs new models and gets faster long after it ships. That's the difference between silicon that depreciates and silicon that compounds."

This concept of 'compounding silicon' is revolutionary in a hardware industry defined by rapid depreciation. It means customers who license Quadric's IP are not just buying a static component but investing in an evolving platform. Daniel Firu, Quadric's co-founder and Chief Product Officer, calls this capability the true product. "We port new models to Chimera cores and our customers take them as a software update, no silicon change," he said. The Chimera architecture is highly scalable, ranging from 1 TOPS for low-power devices to over 3,200 TOPS in multi-chiplet configurations, capable of running everything from traditional computer vision to massive on-device large language models.

A Vote of Confidence in the Edge Revolution

The move toward on-device, or edge, AI is one of the most significant trends shaping the technology landscape. Concerns over data privacy, security, latency, and cost are driving industries to shift processing away from centralized data centers. Quadric's successful funding round is a strong signal of investor confidence in this decentralization movement.

Existing investors, including Pear VC, Uncork Capital, and BEENEXT, all doubled down on their commitments in this latest round. "AI is moving outside the datacenter, and chip companies need silicon that can run tomorrow's models, not just today's. Quadric is solving that, and the design wins are proving it out," said Mar Hershenson, Founding Managing Partner of Pear VC, which led Quadric's seed round. This confidence is backed by strong business performance; in the year leading up to its first Series C close in January 2026, Quadric's product revenues more than tripled as the company reached profitability—a rare feat for a hardware startup.

Joining the round is new investor Offline Ventures, co-founded by Facebook Platform creator Dave Morin and former Apple executive James Higa, further validating Quadric's approach and market position. The collective backing from both impact-focused institutions and veteran Silicon Valley VCs illustrates the broad appeal of Quadric’s mission to build the foundational hardware for the next era of computing.

From Automotive to Humanoids: Expanding the On-Device Frontier

Quadric's technology is already gaining significant traction in demanding markets. The company has secured design wins with automotive giants like Denso, a strategic investor using the GPNPU for an advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) chip, and Tier IV, a leader in autonomous driving software. These applications require the kind of low-latency, high-reliability processing that on-device AI excels at.

With the new funding, Quadric is setting its sights on the next wave of intelligent devices. The programmability of the Chimera core makes it an ideal processing engine for humanoid robotics, where robots must constantly adapt to new tasks and environments. It's also suited for next-generation wearables that will require sophisticated, real-time AI for health monitoring and augmented reality, as well as advanced networking equipment that can intelligently manage data traffic at the edge. By providing a single, adaptable architecture, Quadric is positioning itself as the go-to solution for developers building the intelligent, autonomous systems of tomorrow.