Quick Take
- Mythic AI opened its Bengaluru Centre of Excellence on 23 September 2026.
- The US chipmaker raised $125 Mn in December 2025 to build low-power AI chips.
- India’s team already does about a quarter of the work on Mythic’s Vanguard platform.
Mythic AI, a US chip company, has entered India and is targeting the data centre, automotive and robotics markets. Chairman and CEO Taner Ozcelik confirmed the plan on Wednesday. Energy-efficient AI inference is the entry point.
The company opened its Bengaluru Centre of Excellence on 23 September 2026. Ozcelik set out the India strategy in an interview with BW Businessworld. He said data centres would be one of Mythic’s first India markets.
Mythic is based in Palo Alto, California, and was founded in 2012. It raised $125 Mn in December 2025. That round funds chips the company says cut AI energy use by up to 100 times compared with GPUs.
Why do data centres come first?
Data centres come first because AI computing is straining India’s power supply. Mythic’s pitch is about energy, not electricity bills. Ozcelik said the goal is to run more AI compute within the power a data centre already has.
He argued that energy could become the limiting factor as AI workloads grow. That is a real constraint in India, where power access is uneven. Mythic wants to sell more compute per watt.
The technology behind the claim is called analog compute-in-memory. It does the computing inside the memory itself. This cuts the data moving between memory and processors.
Mythic says the design can be up to 100 times more efficient at the system level than digital or GPU inference. That figure is a company claim. It has not been independently tested in India.
What is Mythic building in Bengaluru?
Mythic is building a product-development centre in Bengaluru, not just a support office. The centre first works on Vanguard, Mythic’s next-generation AI inference platform. The work covers front-end design, physical design and design-for-test.
Ozcelik said the India team already handles about a quarter of the work on Vanguard. He expects that share to rise toward half as the team grows. That is a large role for a new centre.
The company plans to widen the India remit over time. It listed product, testing and characterisation, systems engineering and intelligent sensing as areas to add. The team will cover both pre-silicon and post-silicon work.
Mythic named the disciplines it wants in Bengaluru. They include VLSI design, physical design, DFT, and systems and applications engineering. VLSI means very-large-scale integration, the core of chip design.
Where do automotive, robotics and defence fit?
Automotive, robotics and defence form the second layer of Mythic’s India plan. The company already has a joint development deal with Honda. The two are co-developing an automotive AI chip for next-generation software-defined vehicles.
The Honda deal was announced in February 2026. Honda R&D will license Mythic’s Analog Processing Unit technology. Deployment is targeted for the late 2020s and early 2030s.
Robotics is the next India opportunity. Ozcelik pointed to the growing use of mobile robots and automated systems in factories. He said a personal goal was to one day see Mythic chips in autonomous systems on Bengaluru’s roads.
Defence is a third possible market. India’s defence-tech sector uses low-power chips in drones, sensors and other edge systems. Mythic has named defence and security as target applications for its technology.
Mythic treats these three as one problem. Robots, vehicles and drones all process visual and sensor data in real time. They all run on tight power budgets, which is where Mythic says its chips help.
Could Mythic make chips in India?
Mythic could make chips in India later, but it has announced no factory here. Ozcelik said local production could become possible as India’s semiconductor ecosystem develops. For now, Mythic produces in Germany and Arizona.
The company packages its chips elsewhere in Asia. It is also working on die-to-die packaging technology. Ozcelik said this could challenge TSMC’s CoWoS packaging, with part of that work possibly run from India.
So the India move runs on two tracks. One is a bigger chip-design team in Bengaluru. The other is a new market for low-power AI inference. Mythic said it will work with Indian partners to learn what they need.
What this means for you: If you run a data centre or a robotics startup, a new low-power chip supplier is now building in India, though its chips are not yet made here.
StartupFeed Insight
Watch the Bengaluru headcount, not the marketing. Mythic’s 100x efficiency figure is a company claim and untested in India. The real signal is that the India team already does a quarter of the work on Vanguard, Mythic’s flagship platform, and could reach half. That is design ownership, not a support desk. The people who should watch are Indian data centre operators facing power limits and robotics founders who need compute within a battery. Expect Mythic to name its first Indian data centre pilot or customer before the end of 2027. Until it does, this is intent backed by an office, not revenue.
— Avinash Mishra, Business Correspondent
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