Niobia takes the guesswork out of some of tech’s most expensive mistakes

Key points

• Niobia, a San Francisco startup, uses AI agents on production lines to detect defects in battery and chip manufacturing.
• The AI runs on self-contained GPUs mounted on equipment and can spot pinhole-sized flaws.
• Co-founders Gaurav Jha and Harveen Kaur, both chemistry PhDs, aim to cut diagnosis time from days to minutes.

San Francisco-based startup Niobia is developing AI software to help engineers identify and understand production defects in battery and chip manufacturing. The company's AI agents are placed on manufacturing lines to flag defects, then human engineers use a chatbot to investigate the causes, aiming to provide answers in minutes instead of days.

Niobia is a Battlefield finalist at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, where it will present onstage this afternoon in San Francisco. It is competing against 19 other startups in the Startup Battlefield competition, which runs from today, Tuesday, through Thursday, October 15.

How the technology works

The company's AI agents run on self-contained GPUs mounted directly on manufacturing equipment, similar to a sensor. They can detect pinhole-sized flaws such as scratches. The AI also consolidates data so engineers can ask a chatbot what went wrong and explore the cause further.

Niobia's agents use open source models that the company trains with battery and chip research and other data. This training enables them to identify pinhole-sized defects. Jha said Niobia chose open source models largely because customers do not want their sensitive information going into a public AI cloud where it might be used to train the model.

It’s extremely niche; maybe people will never know about it

— Gaurav Jha

Data security and future plans

Jha said that none of Niobia's customers want their proprietary data to go to the cloud, even with assurances of safety. The startup lets customers hold their own encryption keys so that Niobia cannot decrypt their data. It also outlines its cybersecurity approach given the high-stakes race among adversarial nations in battery and chip innovation.

Jha said the company's current priority is to focus on three specialties: film coating, electroplating (coating a surface with metal using an electric current), and fluidized bed reaction (a chemical process where solid particles are suspended in a gas or liquid). He added that Niobia wants its technology to become more autonomous, with the eventual aim of building a fully self-driving factory for customers.