Kneron, an artificial intelligence (AI) startup company, today announced the completion of series A financing at over ten million US dollars. Alibaba Entrepreneurs Fund and CDIB Capital Group are the lead investors, and Himax Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: HIMX), Qualcomm, Thundersoft, Sequoia Capital, and CY ZONE are co-investors. As a technology leader of edge AI solutions, Kneron will increase its internal resource to accelerate the integration and development of its solutions, while cooperating with its strategic partners to promote the edge AI technologies and speed up the popularity of AI applications.
Kneron offers innovative solutions by moving part of the AI computing power from cloud to edge devices, which differentiates itself from traditional cloud-based AI solution providers. Kneron’s edge AI solutions are able to do real-time recognition, inference, and analysis with no need to connect to the cloud. Thus, the solutions are faster, more reliable and secure, while reducing significantly cost and the cloud burden.
“Edge AI is the key to the popularity of AI applications, and the effective combination between edge AI and cloud AI will be a trend,” said Albert Liu, Kneron CEO. “Kneron’s AI solutions, which integrate hardware and software technologies, have been recognized by many customers. We will continue to develop critical AI technologies, deepen the AI applications in diversified fields, and work together with our partners to create a new era of AI.”
Kneron released in 2016 its first ASIC?Application-specific integrated circuit?chip for AI, Neural Processing Unit (NPU), and its SDK, Reconfigurable Artificial Neural Network, which adopts advanced algorithm to enable quick implementation of different AI applications. Due to the effective integration of software and hardware, the size of Kneron’s NPU is only 1/40 compared to the traditional AI chips with better performance and lower power consumption. Currently, Kneron has provided customized solutions for home appliances, surveillance, and smart phones to several international companies.
Kneron has earned recognition for its innovative technologies and development potential. Kneron participated in Qualcomm Sequoia Frontier Tech Startup Competition 2017, held by Qualcomm, Sequoia Frontier Tech Startup, and Cyzone jointly, and won the first place in the finals with DEMO GOD Award..
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