Kneron has announced $49 million in strategic funding from investors including Foxconn and Alltek as it aims to accelerate the commercialization of artificial intelligence (AI) chips.
The San Diego-based semiconductor startup said the additional funding brings its total Series B financing to $97 million.
The funds will be used to accelerate the deployment of advanced AI, focusing on nano GPT solutions for automotive in particular, Kneron said in a statement.
Growing demand for AI has resulted in a surge in the value of semiconductor companies in 2023. Shares of chip-maker Nvidia have almost trebled this year, giving it a market capital of more than $1 trillion, as it continues to report consensus-beating earnings.
Kneron provides end-to-end integrated hardware and software solutions that enable on-device edge AI inferencing. The company launched the first edge AI chip supporting transformer neural networks, which underpins all GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) models, in 2021.
“Powerful GPT models are mostly still running out of cloud data centers. This results in a slew of issues, including high latency, high data transfer costs, and inadequacies in user privacy and security protection,” Kneron founder and CEO Albert Liu commented.
“Kneron’s solutions resolve these industry bottlenecks by creating hyper-efficient AI chips. We’re thrilled to announce the completion of our Series B funding announcement to continue our work in making AI technology more secure, accessible, and energy-efficient.”
Contact the author at stephen.gunnion@proactiveinvestors.com