SiFive is restructuring and will lay off some employees

Founded in 2015, SiFive stands as the world’s pioneering semiconductor firm built upon the RISC-V architecture. By 2020, the firm secured a Series E funding round amassing $61 million, spearheaded by SK Hynix and participated in by Sutter Hill Ventures, Western Digital’s venture capital segment, Qualcomm Ventures, Intel Capital, Osage University Partners, and Spark Capital. The round also welcomed a fresh investor, Prosperity7 Ventures, setting SiFive’s valuation at half a billion dollars.

Over the course of several evolutionary years, SiFive has carved its niche as an indispensable entity within the RISC-V ecosystem, emerging as the favored choice for crafting diminutive, cost-effective cores. According to ‘More Than Moore‘, SiFive is undergoing a profound reorganization, one facet of which encompasses widespread layoffs, predominantly targeting engineers along with select product and sales personnel. This suggests a pivotal shift in their business focus, potentially transitioning from pre-designed cores to bespoke core designs, thus casting a shade of ambiguity over the trajectory of RISC-V’s progress.

In a communique to TomsHardware, SiFive confirmed the unfortunate retrenchment of approximately 20% of its workforce from diverse internal departments, translating to about 140 individuals. SiFive articulated that, in pursuit of discerning and honing in on the most lucrative opportunities, it’s orchestrating a strategic realignment of its global squads to adeptly cater to the swiftly metamorphosing demands of its clientele.

Presently, SiFive envisages provisioning both standardized and tailor-made products for a myriad of applications, spanning automobiles, consumer electronics, data centers, artificial intelligence, high-performance computing, and wearable technologies, thereby unfurling a robust roadmap tailored to the exigencies of these markets. With Google ushering Android into the RISC-V ecosystem, SiFive seemingly perceives a monumental opportunity looming within sectors like artificial intelligence, wearables, and mobile devices.

Expressing a sanguine outlook on its future, SiFive asserts its financial robustness, forecasting a persistently high demand for its product range.