RISC-V Pivots from Academia to Industrial Heavyweight

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Feb. 16, 2026 –

By Pablo Valerio, EE Times 

The RISC-V architecture is rapidly expanding globally. China leads with 50% of shipments and heavy investment, while Europe seeks technological sovereignty through sustainable, low-power designs. 

Once regarded as an academic curiosity born in 2010 at the University of California, Berkeley, the open-standard instruction set architecture (ISA) is now aggressively targeting high-performance computing (HPC), AI, and automotive sectors.

In a recent interview with EE Times, Andrea Gallo, CEO of RISC-V International, explained that RISC-V’s strategy now focuses on specialization and modularity instead of trying to be everywhere. This shows the architecture has moved past its experimental stage and is now being widely adopted in industry.

According to the organization’s 2025 Annual Report, RISC-V’s market share is expected to grow from 2.5% in 2021 to 33.7% by 2031. This rapid growth is driven by countries like China and India using the open standard to gain more control over their technology.

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