Quadric rides the shift from cloud AI to on-device inference — and it’s paying off

Quadric, a chip-IP startup founded by veterans of bitcoin mining firm 21E6, is capitalizing on the growing demand for on-device AI inference as companies and governments seek to reduce cloud infrastructure costs and enhance sovereign AI capabilities. Originally focused on automotive applications like driver assistance, Quadric has expanded into laptops, industrial devices, and other markets, leveraging its programmable AI processor IP that customers can embed into their own silicon. This approach, combined with a software stack and toolchain for running models locally, has driven significant growth: Quadric’s licensing revenue surged from about $4 million in 2024 to $15–20 million in 2025, with a target of $35 million in 2026, boosting its valuation to $270–300 million. The shift toward on-device AI is fueled by the rise of transformer-based models and the increasing cost and complexity of centralized AI infrastructure. Quadric’s chip-agnostic technology supports distributed AI setups where inference runs locally on devices such as