Private company

XMOS

Logo: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons3

British fabless semiconductor company

XMOS is a fabless semiconductor company that develops generative systems-on-chips designed to integrate control, input/output, digital signal processing, and artificial intelligence functions. The company's XCORE platform enables users to generate customizable system-on-chips with real-time reconfigurability and deterministic parallel architecture, enabling developers to execute multiple tasks simultaneously.2 It was founded by David May.1 Wikipedia text CC BY-SA 4.0

Last updated Oct 21, 2026.

Overview

2005Founded1
  • HeadquartersBristol1
  • Websitewww.xmos.com
  • Legal formprivately held company1
XCORE XS1-AnA processor
Photo: Henk.muller, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons5

XMOS is a fabless semiconductor company that develops generative systems-on-chips designed to integrate control, input/output, digital signal processing, and artificial intelligence functions. The company's XCORE platform enables users to generate customizable system-on-chips with real-time reconfigurability and deterministic parallel architecture, enabling developers to execute multiple tasks simultaneously.2

The story

Founded by David May in 2005.1

XMOS was founded in July 2005 by Ali Dixon, James Foster, Noel Hurley, David May, and Hitesh Mehta. It received seed funding from the University of Bristol enterprise fund, and Wyvern seed fund.

The name XMOS is a loose reference to Inmos. Some concepts found in XMOS technology (such as channels and threads) are part of the Transputer legacy.

In the autumn of 2006, XMOS secured funding from Amadeus Capital Partners, DFJ Esprit, and Foundation Capital. It also has strategic investors Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH, Huawei Technologies, and Xilinx Inc, which in 2014 invested $26.2 million. Additionally, it received an investment through the sale of 22.3% of the Company's shares to Prelude Trust plc of Cambridge. In September 2017, XMOS secured $15M in an investment round led by Infineon.

In July 2017, XMOS acquired SETEM, a company that specialises in audio algorithms for source separation.

In 2019, XMOS raised $19 million in funding from Harbert European Growth Capital and existing investors.

In December 2023, XMOS signed a joint development agreement with Sonical for Headphone 3.0 technology.

From Wikipedia’s article on XMOS, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4

Leadership

Who has led XMOS, and when. Pick a name to see everywhere that person has worked.

Products and brands

Xmos designs multicore microcontrollers under the XCORE series. While the second generation launched in 2015, had dedicated audiocontroller spun off and were used in soundboards as well as headphone amplifiers, the third generation was launched in 2020 and focused on applications within the AIoT. The fourth generation added RISC-V compatibility and was announced in December 2022.

In 2025, it announced a recategorisation of its XCORE hardware, defining it as a Generative System-on-Chip (GenSoC), a type of SoC that is specifically designed to accommodate generative AI-based natural language tools.

From Wikipedia’s article on XMOS, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4

Timeline

  1. 2005Founded Founded1

Sources

The numbers on this page point here. Each one links to the record it came from.

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