SANTA CLARA, Calif., Oct. 22, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- (RISC-V Summit) — Ainekko, a startup pioneering open, software-defined AI infrastructure, today made public the launch of AI Foundry, an open-source platform designed to make advanced hardware and tooling accessible, modular, and community-driven. The initiative marks a major milestone in the evolution of open infrastructure, extending open-source principles all the way down to silicon.
At its core, Ainekko is reimagining how hardware and software co-evolve by making chip-level innovation accessible, composable, and community-driven. Ainekko is open-sourcing a powerful collection of modular building blocks to enable developers to build everything from lightweight edge devices to high-performance AI inference systems. The platform includes silicon RTL, emulation tools, developer APIs, and community resources, all available today on aifoundry.org.
“Just as Linux opened up operating systems and Kubernetes made cloud infrastructure composable, Ainekko brings that same spirit of openness to AI hardware and tooling to extend open-source principles all the way down to silicon,” said Ainekko co-founder Tanya Dadasheva.
AI Foundry will serve as the central hub for this new ecosystem and will support community collaboration, contributions, and adoption across a wide range of edge and embedded AI applications. From robotics and retail to industrial automation and smart devices, developers will now have open access to infrastructure that was previously locked behind proprietary walls.
This launch comes at a critical inflection point: electricity demand from data centers is projected to more than double by 2030, according to the IEA, while developers and enterprises are increasingly seeking energy-efficient, affordable alternatives to closed, vertically integrated AI platforms. AI Foundry addresses both challenges by offering a modular, open, and software-defined foundation for building the next generation of inference systems.
“Ainekko is committed to building not just a product, but a movement,” said co-founder Roman Shaposhnik. “We’re inviting developers, researchers, and partners to join us in shaping the future of AI infrastructure, openly and together.”
“The highly energy-efficient and programmable RISC-V Minion cores, with their attached accelerators, configurable on-die SRAM and NEMI (Next-Generation Esperanto Mesh Interface), along with the low-power techniques that got developed at Esperanto by my team were truly unique and revolutionary in terms of generality and scalability of the system, and helped pack so much compute power into such a small power budget,” said Jayesh Iyer, ex-Principal at Tesla and former Chief Architect & Fellow at Esperanto Technologies. “With AI Foundry, Ainekko brings this validated, highly programmable, scalable and energy-efficient many-core RISC-V architecture to the open-source community and is a significant step forward for open silicon.”
“AI infrastructure demands end-to-end thinking and an open architecture mindset. Ainekko has both,” said Alexander Galitsky, founding partner at Almaz Capital and angel investor in Ainekko. “I’ve known the founders for many years and supported their journey from day one. Their decision to open up the entire stack shows the kind of ambition and execution discipline it takes to reshape an industry. The future will belong to open, composable systems, and Ainekko is leading that shift.”
The first release is now live. Developers and collaborators can get started at aifoundry.org, find us on GitHub, and join the community server on Discord.
Meet Ainekko at RISC-V Summit + AI Plumbers Unconference
Ainekko will be exhibiting at Booth S15 on the RISC-V Summit expo floor and speaking on Thursday, October 23 at 2:35 PM PT in Grand Ballroom H. Co-founders Roman Shaposhnik and Tanya Dadasheva will present: “Democratizing Inference of Open-Weight Models on RISC-V Manycore Accelerators.” Additionally, Ainekko is hosting the AI Plumbers Unconference: San Francisco Edition on Saturday, October 25 from 9 AM to 5 PM at 45 29th St, San Francisco. RSVP at https://luma.com/it0fskb9.
About Ainekko
Ainekko is a startup building the first open, software-defined platform for AI infrastructure—extending open-source principles all the way down to silicon. By offering flexible, modular hardware and tooling, Ainekko empowers developers to build efficient, composable AI systems for edge and data center applications alike. Founded by industry veterans with deep expertise in open systems and silicon design, Ainekko is on a mission to make AI hardware accessible, developer-driven, and community-powered. More at www.ainekko.io
About AI Foundry
AI Foundry is the open-source community platform stewarded by Ainekko. It hosts the company’s released RTL, emulation tools, developer APIs, and documentation designed to support collaborative development of flexible, software-defined AI systems. AI Foundry is the central hub for developers, researchers, and partners building the next generation of open, composable AI infrastructure. More at www.aifoundry.org
Contact ainekko@orogroup.com
