Kneron, a US-based artificial intelligence (AI) startup backed by Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-Shing’s Horizons Ventures, has secured a further $49 million to bring its total Series B financing to $97 million, the startup announced on Tuesday.
Taiwan’s Foxconn, the company that assembles Apple’s iPhones, and Taiwan-based communications solutions provider Alltek Technology were among the investors in the extension round.
Kneron said it will use the additional funds to accelerate the deployment of advanced AI for automotive and other areas. The startup plans to focus on AI chips based on the so-called generative pre-trained transformers (GPT), a key advancement powering generative AI applications such as ChatGPT.
This strategic financing builds on the completion of the first tranche of $48 million led by Horizons Ventures in October 2022. Investors such as Taiwan’s consumer electronics manufacturer LITEON Technology, memory computer provider ADATA Technology, and the family office of an unspecified Taiwanese financial institution participated in the first Series B tranche.
Kneron, founded in 2015 and based in San Diego, develops full-stack hardware and software products for AI applications. It designs a chipset that goes into devices, including consumer electronics and vehicles that allow AI on the “edge”, meaning that the AI runs on a device rather than in the cloud.
The startup launched its first edge AI chip supporting transformer neural networks, which underpins all GPT models, in 2021.
“Powerful GPT models are mostly still running out of cloud data centres. This results in a slew of issues, including high latency, high data transfer costs, and inadequacies in user privacy and security protection,” said Albert Liu, founder and CEO of Kneron, in a statement. He said, in comparison, Kneron’s solutions can resolve these industry bottlenecks by “creating hyper-efficient AI chips”.
While graphics processing units (GPUs) developed by global chip giants, including Nvidia, currently dominate the market, Kneron offers neural processing units, or NPUs. Its latest auto-grade NPU chip KL730 is designed for vehicles, supporting features like autonomous driving.
With the completion of its Series B round, the startup has secured over $190 million in total financing. Horizons Ventures, which had led Kneron’s $18-million Series A1 round in 2018, is a long-term investor in the startup. Its earlier backers also include Foxconn, Sequoia Capital, and Qualcomm Ventures.