A modern chip holds dozens of separate blocks, from processor cores to memory controllers, and they all need to talk. Arteris sells the roads between them. Its FlexNoC technology turns signals inside a chip into small packets of data, like a tiny computer network. Chipmakers license it rather than build their own, and it had gone into hundreds of designs by the time Arteris went public in October 2021.

A Network on a Chip

Arteris was founded in 2003 and built its business on network-on-chip interconnect, known as NoC. Older chips wired each block to the others directly, which grew messy as designs got bigger. Arteris packetized the traffic so the connections could scale. It sells this as intellectual property, so chip designers pay license fees and royalties instead of buying parts. Arteris licenses part of its FlexNoC technology from Qualcomm. It bet on demand from cars, AI, 5G, and data centers.

Fourteen Dollars on Nasdaq

Arteris priced its IPO at $14 a share in October 2021 and listed on Nasdaq as AIP. Its chief executive, K. Charles Janac, and the venture firm Ventech held large stakes going in. The company was small next to the chipmakers it served, with offices in California, Texas, France, China, South Korea, and Japan. Arteris still trades on Nasdaq, from its headquarters in Campbell, California.

Cover: The Railway Yard, Balaklava, Roger Fenton. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a railway yard (routing traffic).