2026 Outlook with Shelly Henry of MooresLabAI

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your company.

I’m Shelly Henry, CEO and co-founder of MooresLabAI. After two decades of building chips for Xbox, HoloLens, and Azure, I reached a point where I knew the industry needed a reset. So I teamed up with fellow engineers, Shashank Chaurasia and Sirish Munipalli to create MooresLabAI—a company built on the belief that silicon design should move at the speed of software. Our flagship product, VerifAgent™, is more than a tool—it’s a co-engineer that reads specs and builds testbenches, helping teams deliver chips faster, smarter, and with less burnout.

What was the most exciting high point of 2025 for your company?

The moment we launched VerifAgent™ at DAC 2025 was electric. We weren’t just unveiling a product—we were showing the world a new way to build chips. Watching engineers light up as our AI seamlessly built testplan, testbenches and testcases was unforgettable. One team told us, “We didn’t believe it until we saw it find a bug we missed.” That shift—from doubt to belief—was the real win.

What was the biggest challenge your company faced in 2025?

Trust was our biggest hurdle. Asking seasoned engineers to let AI into their verification flow felt like asking them to hand over the keys to a race car. They worried about hallucinated code, broken flows, and losing control. We had to earn their confidence, one pilot, one compile, one simulation at a time.

How is your company’s work addressing this challenge?

We built VerifAgent to be transparent and accountable. Every output is simulation-verified, every testbench compile-ready. It fits into existing flows without disruption and runs securely on-prem. We didn’t just ask for trust—we proved ourselves. And when engineers saw our AI catch bugs and hit coverage goals faster than their own teams, the trust followed.

What do you think the biggest growth area for 2026 will be, and why?

2026 will be the year AI becomes indispensable in chip design. The demand for custom silicon is exploding, and traditional methods can’t keep up. Time and talent are stretched thin. AI isn’t just a nice-to-have anymore—it’s the only way forward. The companies that embrace it will lead the next wave of innovation.

How is your company’s work addressing this growth?

We’re building beyond verification. SpecAgent and DesignAgent are coming—AI modules that formalize specs and generate RTL. Together with VerifAgent, they’ll form MooreCoreX, our full-stack platform for IP development. We’re already piloting these tools, and by mid-2026, we’ll offer a complete AI-powered flow from spec to silicon.

What conferences did you participate in in 2025?

DAC 2025 was our breakout moment—nonstop traffic, live demos, and real excitement. At the AI Infra Summit, we connected with partners shaping the future of infrastructure. Verification Futures gave us deep, technical conversations with engineers who live and breathe verification. Each event reminded us: we’re solving real problems for real people.

What are your 2026 Conference Plans?

We’re going bigger in 2026. DAC and DVCon are locked in, with DVCon marking our debut as Gold Sponsors. We’re exploring new verticals like chiplets and CPUs. Conferences aren’t just marketing—they’re where we meet the people who challenge us, inspire us, and help us grow.

How do customers normally engage with your company?

Our journey with customers starts with a conversation, then a demo, and often a pilot. We deploy VerifAgent in their environment, run it on real IP, and measure results. When they see 90%+ productivity gains and bugs caught early, the pilot becomes a partnership. We stay close, offering support, training, and a shared commitment to success.

How are you incorporating AI into your products?

AI isn’t a feature—it’s our foundation. VerifAgent uses LLMs to generate verification assets from specs, and MooreLLM is our own model tuned for hardware. Our multi-agent system handles everything from parsing to debugging. It’s prompt-free, simulation-verified, and built for engineers—not marketers.

Is AI affecting the way you develop your products?

We use our own AI to build and test itself. VerifAgent helps us debug, analyze logs, and validate new features. Our development is fast, iterative, and deeply collaborative. Engineers and AI scientists work side-by-side, learning from data and refining models. It’s not just efficient—it’s energizing.

Additional Comments?

Reflecting on 2025, I’d add that it was as much about building credibility as it was about building technology. One big milestone for us was expanding our advisory board with industry veterans who lent us their experience and legitimacy. In September 2025, for instance, we brought on multiple high-profile advisors: Tom Fitzpatrick, a globally recognized authority in electronic design automation (EDA), K. Balasubramanian, former President of TI Japan, Sanjay Lall, who has 30+ years in EDA sales leadership (Cadence, etc.), Ashutosh Saxena, a noted AI entrepreneur and Stanford AI PhD, and Vijay Chandrasekharan, a two-time founder and seasoned software architect. Having these folks in our corner was a big confidence boost – not just internally, but for customers and investors.

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Also Read:

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