Silimate (YC S23)

Wrapped up the year with the Silimate (YC S23) team at a KBBQ dinner! Looking back, it’s incredible to see what we accomplished in 2025: ✪ >20× ARR growth across 10+ customers, from startups to Fortune 500s ✪ Achieved profitability ✪ Moved into an amazing private office in downtown Mountain View ✪ Scaled from 3 → 6 full-time team members (lean and mean!) ⠀⠀✷ Hires turned down/left jobs from NVIDIA + Apple to join us ✪ Iterated our first product, Preqorsor, to a stable v1.0: fast PPA prediction + optimization ⠀⠀✷ Strong recurring usage across customers ⠀⠀✷ Users calling it indispensable to their workflow ⠀⠀✷ Power users even building their own apps on top of it ⠀⠀✷ v2.0 arriving soon with RTL-level dynamic power prediction + optimization ⠀⠀✷ Granted a patent on the underlying technology ✪ Released our second product, SMDB: an AI debugger/RCA tool for chip designers ⠀⠀✷ Already helping resolve numerous real bugs ⠀⠀✷ More work ahead to achieve superhuman level 🚀 Building this company has been the most fulfilling thing I’ve done in my life by far. Thank you to all of our customers, partners, and investors for making this possible. Here’s to an amazing 2026!

We're hiring! Apply with the link in the comments👇

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"How do you justify contributing to open-source projects as a startup?" This week, I presented at #62DAC open-source birds-of-a-feather session, and right after the session, we got asked this question by someone. It's a great question. Many people probably see open-source contributions as a waste of time. But at Silimate, it's no secret that we upstream a lot of our bug fixes / enhancements to the open-source EDA projects we use. There are several reasons we do this. Some are selfish, others slightly less so. Selfish reasons: 1. You get free high-quality code reviews from the maintainers (who know the code best!) 2. Once your changes are accepted, you can more easily merge upstream changes back into your fork 3. Once you contribute, maintainers tend to prioritize the issues you file (less work for you!) 4. It's a good way to engage with 10xer developers who could eventually become hires or contractors Less selfish reasons: 1. You make a lasting impact: open-source is forever 2. You help build momentum around the project 3. You get to make cool friends 4. You get invited to present at awesome events like DAC open-source birds-of-a-feather 5. ... It's just good karma :) If you're at a startup and thinking about upstreaming some of your open-source bug fixes / enhancements, this is your sign to go for it! And if you are passionate about EDA, AI, and/or open-source software, you should consider applying to work with us!

Building the copilot for chip designers isn’t easy. It requires a deep understanding of chip design nuances, modern software principles, and AI capabilities, and the ability to ship a product that tightly fuses all three. It’s a huge win for us – but more importantly, for our customers – that our copilot demonstrably impacts the bottom line of our chip customers, such as with SiFive. SiFive is a provider of RISC-V SoCs and IPs. They hold distinction as the very first company to produce a chip that implements the RISC-V ISA, and they’ve shipped more than 2 billion RISC-V chips to-date. It’s an honor to work with them. – We’ll continue to share more customer stories + wins, so stay in touch. If you’re passionate about AI + chips + software and want to join the team building the chip design copilot that’s loved by customers, we’re hiring! See the link to open roles in the comments 🔥