lowRISC CIC

lowRISC functions as the steward and maintainer of the OpenTitan and Ibex projects.

lowRISC was founded in 2014 from the University of Cambridge in the UK. It is a Community Interest Company (CIC) - a UK regulated non-profit organisation.

The company mission is to drive commercial adoption of open source silicon.

What is a CIC?

A community interest company (CIC) is a type of company, designed for social enterprises that want to use their profits and assets for the public good. CICs have all the flexibility and certainty of a regular company, but with special features to ensure they are working for the benefit of the community. A social enterprise is a business with “for-good” objectives whose surpluses are reinvested for that purpose in the business or in the community. lowRISC C.I.C. does not have shares, so we don’t pay dividends, and any surpluses are reinvested in our work.

While permissive licensing is used for hardware and software design artefacts, it remains necessary to protect trademarks, and certification has a key role to play. This is where lowRISC as a vendor neutral not-for-profit provides an independent home for holding intellectual property rights, and either directly operating, or specifying and overseeing the operation of certification programmes.

As a not-for-profit company, lowRISC can act as a neutral home for projects and multi-party corporate collaborations, and is a trustworthy steward for open source designs and tools.