When NeoLogic began designing CPUs for AI servers that would run faster while using less power, the semiconductor veterans behind it got the same response over and over: “Impossible.”
“Most of the people we met said you can’t innovate in logic synthesis or circuit design, according to TechCrunch co-founder and CEO Avi Messica, mentioned that it is too mature. “Some even flat out told us it couldn’t be done.”
NeoLogic, based in Israel, decided to prove them wrong. Founded in 2021 by Messica and CTO Ziv Leshem, who together have half a century of chip design and manufacturing experience, the startup is building a server CPU with simplified logic. By using fewer transistors and logic gates, the chip can process information more efficiently, meaning more speed, less energy.
For Leshem, who spent decades at Intel and Synopsis, and Messica, who’s worked across both circuit design and manufacturing, the project is personal.
“We co-founded this company more than four years ago because Moore’s law was dead,” Messica said, referring to the once-reliable trend of transistor counts doubling every two years.
Around a decade ago, chipmakers stopped shrinking transistors because they were already unimaginably small. But NeoLogic saw another path forward: rethinking the logic itself, not just the size.
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The company is currently working with two unnamed hyperscaler partners on the design and plans to have a single-core test chip ready by the end of this year. If all goes well, NeoLogic aims to bring its CPUs to data centers by 2027.
Fueling that journey is a fresh $10 million Series A round, led by KOMPAS VC with participation from M Ventures, Maniv Mobility, and lool Ventures. The funding will be used to expand the engineering team and advance CPU development.
The timing couldn’t be more urgent. Data centers, particularly those supporting AI, are consuming electricity at an unprecedented rate. Power demand from data centers is projected to double within the next four years.
Messica says NeoLogic’s design could cut energy use so significantly that the benefits would ripple far beyond lower power bills.
“It affects everything,” he said. “Construction costs, capital investment, water usage, you could shave off roughly 30% of the total cost of a next-gen data center. That’s the impact we envisioned five years ago.” If NeoLogic’s chips deliver on that promise, the question may no longer be whether you can innovate in CPU logic, but whether we can afford not to.
