AIStorm Raises $16M in Oversubscribed Series B Funding to Commercialize AI-in-Sensor Chips

Investors include AsusTek, Egis, Knowles, Meyer Corporation, and Senvest Management. AIStorm will deploy its disruptive charge-domain-processing, AI-in-Sensor technology in handset, notebook, smart speaker, home automation, remote control, TV, earbud, IoT, wearable, and transport applications.

HOUSTON -- December 15, 2020 -- AIStorm, an innovator of high-performance AI-in-Sensor processors, has closed $16 million in an oversubscribed Series B financing round from strategic investors that include AsusTek, a leading manufacturer of computing equipment; Egis Technology Inc., a major biometrics supplier; Knowles Corporation, a market leader in advanced micro-acoustic microphones; Meyer Corporation, a world leader in food-preparation equipment; and Senvest Management, a New York-based venture capital firm.

In collaboration with its strategic partners, AIStorm is targeting a range of applications where its technology offers unique advantages: imaging and audio, facial recognition, access control, behavioral tracking, people counting, face detection, object tracking, and segmentation.

“AIStorm’s approach is the only technology that allows the sensor to couple directly to popular convolutional neural networks. This allows AIStorm to deliver true, template-based ‘always-on’ at the edge—at prices that deep-submicron digital competitors cannot match for the same performance. This is a winning formula in the highly competitive IoT sector,” said David Schie, CEO of AIStorm.

To accelerate access to key markets, AIStorm has partnered with established companies that are leaders in their respective markets:

• AsusTek is a leader in laptops and residential IoT devices
• Egis is the leader in biometric sensing, with its chips used by most of the major handset makers worldwide
• Knowles Corporation is a market leader in advanced micro-acoustic microphones
• Meyer Corporation is a world leader in cookware and food-processing equipment

“AIStorm’s unique, charge-switched analog computing, coupled with its wise AI-in-Sensor approach, offers dramatic advantages for ultra-low power, ultra-low-latency AIoT edge computing. We look forward to an ongoing strategic collaboration,” said Jonney Shih, chairman of AsusTek.

Using sensor data directly—without digitization—enables efficient processing

AIStorm’s charge-domain processing approach differs from solutions used by ARM licensees, FPGAs, or vendors of process-in-memory solutions. It accepts charge directly from the sensor, such as electrons from a pixel or MEMs microphone, and multiplies that charge directly. AIStorm’s partners benefit from an AI-at-the-edge technology that is scalable, offers MAC efficiencies up to several thousand TOPS per watt, and works with conventional tool flows.

“Offering true CNN functionality and requiring a minimum of external components, AIStorm’s solutions are well positioned to dominate the AI edge space — especially in always-on, battery-operated applications such as cell phones, TV remotes, laptops, home security, and authentication,” said Nav Sooch, founder and chairman of Silicon Labs.

About AIStorm

AIStorm Inc. is the pioneer and leader in AI-in-Sensor processing, which eliminates the latency, power and cost associated with competitive solutions at the edge. AIStorm is headquartered in Houston, Texas, with offices in Graz, Budapest and Hsinchu. For more information, visit https://aistorm.ai.