ThirdAI Raises $3 Mn to Expand Causal AI for Semiconductor Fabs
By Sanjana Gupta ·
Industrial AI company ThirdAI Automation has raised $3 million in seed funding in Bengaluru, co-led by Endiya Partners and Capria Ventures. The company, headquartered in San Francisco, will use the funds to scale products, grow teams in India and overseas, and expand deployments with equipment makers and semiconductor fabs.
Founded in 2024 by Vivek Vishwakarma and Sainyam Galhotra, the firm builds a root cause analysis platform for semiconductor manufacturing. It uses causal AI to diagnose failures faster, reduce downtime, and improve yield.
Currently, engineers still conduct root cause analysis (RCA) in fabs using manual workflows. Each incident can take 20–40 hours of investigation, with existing tools focusing on prediction and anomaly detection. Additionally, they offer limited support when equipment fails.
“This round will provide the momentum required to take our technology deeper into real fab environments,” Galhotra remarked in a statement.
ThirdAI uses a causal AI-based RCA copilot to automate diagnosis. The system links equipment logs, sensor data, images, and operational records. It identifies cause-and-effect relationships to help engineers move faster.
“In a modern semiconductor fab, downtime is often triggered by issues engineers already have the data for,” Vishwakarma said. “ThirdAI is built to surface cause-and-effect relationships directly at the equipment layer.”
In both pilot and production environments, the company reported up to an 80% reduction in diagnostic time, 90% diagnostic accuracy against expert-led workflows, and 30–50% lower deployment costs than custom analytics systems.
Raghav Gupta, Vice President at Endiya Partners, said, “Root cause analysis remains largely manual and time-intensive. Their approach has the potential to change that.”
Surya Mantha, Managing Partner at Capria Ventures, added that the platform can improve uptime and yield in high-volume fabs. Similar systems can also benefit power, utilities, and chemical plants.