Niobia's AI Finds Chip Defects in Minutes, Not Days

By Amara Osei

A single production defect can cost millions of dollars and stall a chip or battery line for days. San Francisco startup Niobia says its AI software cuts that diagnosis time to minutes.

The company places AI agents directly on production lines to hunt for defects, then brings in human engineers to work out what might cause a product to fail. The agents run on self-contained GPUs mounted on manufacturing equipment, much like a sensor. They can spot pinhole-sized flaws such as scratches.

Niobia's software also pools production data in one place, so engineers can ask a chatbot what went wrong and dig into the root cause. The pitch targets one of manufacturing's most expensive pain points: chips and batteries are among the world's most important products and increasingly in short supply, yet things inevitably go awry during R&D. Engineers then spend days or longer finding a fix before restarting production.

Who's behind it?

Co-founders Gaurav Jha and Harveen Kaur both hold PhDs in chemistry and have worked at chipmakers and battery manufacturers. In a call ahead of TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where Niobia is a Battlefield finalist, Jha said the company serves a multibillion-dollar market that includes some of the biggest battery and semiconductor makers.

"It's extremely niche; maybe people will never know about it," Jha said of the battery and chip manufacturing market. "But it's like behind the scenes, this is powering everything… we just don't see it in the regular world."

"Every product around you, like glasses or shoes, slippers, wallets, and headphones — these processes touch every single part of it," he added.

Why open-source models and customer-held keys?

Niobia's agents run on open-source models that the company trains further with battery and chip research and other data — training that lets them catch pinhole-sized defects. Jha said the open-source choice was deliberate: customers refuse to send highly sensitive information to a public AI cloud where it might train the model.

"None of our customers want their proprietary data to go to the cloud, even if we tell them it's safe," Jha said.

Security goes further. Niobia lets customers hold their own encryption keys, so the startup itself cannot decrypt customer data. That matters given the high-stakes race among adversarial nations to innovate in batteries and chips.

What's next?

For now, Niobia is focusing on three process specialties:

• Film coating
• Electroplating — coating a surface with metal using an electric current
• Fluidized bed reaction — a chemical process where solid particles are suspended in a gas or liquid

The longer-term goal is autonomy. Jha said the company wants its technology to become more autonomous, with the eventual aim of building out a fully self-driving factory for its customers.

Niobia will present on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt in San Francisco on Tuesday, competing against 19 other startups in the Startup Battlefield competition, which runs through Thursday, October 15.