Spencer Chin,Senior Editor, Design News

February 21, 2026

2 Min Read

Mark Ren of Agentrys will talk about the development and future of agnetic AI during a DesignCon Keynote session Wednesday, February 25. DesignCon

At a Glance

• Agentic AI automates verification, debugging and optimization tasks in semiconductor development.
• Autonomous agents address critical shortage of chip design expertise across the industry.
• New paradigm called Agentic Design Automation pairs agents with specialized toolchains.

While generative AI has dominated headlines in recent years, agentic AI is emerging as a powerful tool for design engineers, a topic that will take center stage at this year’s DesignCon. Among the highlights is the Wednesday keynote by Mark Ren, founder and CEO of Agentrys, a leading provider of agentic AI tools.

Ren’s keynote, titled “Agentic AI For Chip Design,” will delve into the development and future potential of agentic AI in engineering design. He anticipates that agentic AI tools will further automate tasks that electronic design automation (EDA) software has begun to address in recent years.

“Agentic AI can automate engineering tasks such as verifications, debugging, and optimization,” Ren shared in an interview with Design News. “Engineers currently create the schematic and RTL; this process will soon become automated.”

Boosting Productivity in Engineering

Ren emphasized the immense productivity benefits agentic AI offers, particularly for tasks that are traditionally time-intensive.

Related:Industrial Engineers Face Steep Learning Curve as Agentic AI Adoption Proves Complex

“Almost all companies are short-handed on design expertise,” Ren explained. “There aren’t many professionals working in areas like chip design. Agentic AI can explore larger design stages and optimize designs more effectively.”

The Evolution of Agentic AI

“During his presentation, Ren will highlight several AI-agent research efforts from his time at Nvidia Research, including an agent that solves nearly all VerilogEval tasks, an RTL PPA-optimization agent, a formal-verification-aware debug agent, and a log-file analysis agent.

Ren will argue that the next wave of chip-design productivity requires a new paradigm—Agentic Design Automation (ADA)—in which autonomous agents, paired with an agent-native toolchain, automate the labor-intensive engineering loops that slow design closure.

Ren noted that the current agentic AI landscape includes both general-purpose commercial AI agents and specialized AI agents developed by companies for internal use. He predicts that both types will coexist, depending on specific engineering requirements.

The Role of Humans in Agentic AI

Despite the advancements in agentic AI, Ren highlighted a key limitation: the lack of domain knowledge in many current tools. This is where human expertise remains indispensable. Design engineers will continue to play a critical role by providing proprietary data, which is often unavailable publicly—unlike software, which is increasingly open source.

“Humans will still play a vital role because they are needed to verify data and provide design guidance,” Ren said. “Right now, it’s an art to use agentic AI; you have to know what they can and cannot do.”

Related:Agentic AI Transforms Hardware Engineering by Automating Model Construction & Validation

DesignCon

Feb 24, 2026 TO Feb 26, 2026

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Santa Clara Convention Center | Santa Clara, CA

The must-attend event for chip, board, and systems design engineers. DesignCon is the premier high-speed communications and system design conference and exposition, offering industry-critical engineering education in the heart of electronics innovation — Silicon Valley.

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About the Author

Spencer Chin

Senior Editor, Design News

Spencer Chin is a Senior Editor for Design News, covering the electronics beat, which includes semiconductors, components, power, embedded systems, artificial intelligence