New Delhi, Jan. 27 -- Ricursive Intelligence's rapid rise says less about speed and more about conviction.

Just two months after formally launching, the AI chip startup has raised $300 million in a Series A round at a $4 billion valuation, led by Lightspeed. The funding comes on the heels of a Sequoia-led seed round and takes the company's total capital raised to $335 million, according to reports cited by the company.

For a semiconductor startup with no commercial chip in the market, the numbers stand out. But investors backing Ricursive are not buying a product roadmap; they are buying a thesis: that AI systems capable of designing and improving their own chips could redefine how computing hardware evolves.

Ricursive was founded by A...