A startup based in San Diego and Taipei is quietly nailing funding and deals from some of the biggest names in electronics. Kneron, which specializes in energy-efficient processors for edge artificial intelligence, has just raised a strategic funding round from Taiwanese manufacturing giant Foxconn and IC maker Winbond.
The deal came a year after Kneron closed a $ 40 million round led by Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-Shing Horizons Ventures. Its other major investors include Alibaba Entrepreneurship Fund, Sequoia Capital, Qualcomm, and SparkLabs Taipei.
Kneron declined to disclose the dollar amount of the investment from Foxconn and Winbond due to investor inquiries, but said it was an "eight-figure" deal, founder and CEO Albert Liu told ProWellTech in an interview.
Founded in 2015, Kneron's latest product is a neural processing unit capable of enabling sophisticated AI applications without relying on the cloud. The startup is directly hiring chips from Intel and Google, which it says consume more power than its offering. The startup recently got a talent boost after hiring Davis Chen, the former chief of engineering at Qualcomm in Taipei.
Kneron's customers include Chinese air conditioning giant Gree and German autonomous driving software provider Teraki, and the new deal is turning the world's largest electronics manufacturer into a customer. As part of the strategic deal, Kneron will work with Foxconn on the latter's intelligent manufacturing and the newly introduced open platform for electric vehicles, while his work with Winbond will focus on microcontroller unit (MCU) -based artificial intelligence and on memory computing.
"Low power AI chips are pretty easy to plug into sensors. We all know that in some operating lines the sensors are quite small, so it's not easy to use a large GPU. [graphics processing unit] or CPU [central processing unit]especially when power consumption is a big concern, "said Liu, who held R&D positions at Qualcomm and Samsung before founding Kneron.
Unlike some of its competitors, Kneron designs chips for a wide range of use cases, from manufacturing, smart home, smartphones, robotics, surveillance, payments, to autonomous driving. It not only produces chips, but also the AI software embedded in the chips, a strategy Liu said differentiates his company from Chinese AI darlings such as SenseTime and Megvii, which enable AI service through the cloud.
Kneron also had a less aggressive funding pace than these companies, which fuel their rapid expansion through outsized funding rounds. Six-year-old SenseTime has raised about $ 2.6 billion to date, while nine-year Megvii has grossed about $ 1.4 billion. Kneron, in comparison, raised slightly $ 70 million from a Serie A round.
Like Chinese AI rookies, Kneron is considering an initial public offering. The company is expected to make a profit in 2023, Liu said, and "this will probably be a good time for us to go to the IPO."
