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A US semiconductor startup named Kneron raised $49 million in a new round of funding for its goal to increase commercialization of its AI chips. Companies who invested in this round of funding include reputable Taiwanese companies such as Foxconn, Alltek Technology, Horizon Ventures, Liteon Technology Corp., Adata Technology, and Palpilot International. 

Kneron was hoping to raise funds for commercialization efforts in order to compete with other tech rivals, including Nvidia, Qualcomm, and Mediatek. In particular, Nvidia is known for its GPUs which are run in data centers that are able to handle the large amounts of computing power and data that is needed to train AI systems. Meaning that these types of ai systems are run from the cloud. On the other hand, Kneron has designed a chipset that can go into devices that allow for AI to be on the “edge”, meaning that devices can run on a device instead of in the cloud. According to advocates, having AI on the edge is better in terms of security and speed. 

What makes Kneron stand out is that its semiconductors called “neural processing units” (NPUs), which are much cheaper than GPUs. This could potentially lead more people to switch to NPUs instead of traditional GPUs. The product that Kneron is primarily focused on is its KL730 chip which is designed for cars and could support autonomous driving. Kneron stated in a press release that the funding would go towards “expanding its efforts in enabling AI to make autonomous driving a reality” (Kharpal, 2023). Kneron and Foxconn also agreed that part of Foxconn's investment will go towards the deployment of advanced AI for automotives and development of AI chips that operate generative pre-trained (GPT) models and applications from the cloud. Kneron founder and CEO, Albert Liu, claims that the company “is poised to become a significant player in this industry… Kneron’s lightweight reconfigurable solutions resolve three major problems faced by AI use cases — latency, security and cost — thereby enabling AI everywhere” (Wiggers, 2023).

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2023/09/26/ai-chip-firm-kneron-raises-49-million-as-it-looks-to-rival-nvidia.html. ; https://techcrunch.com/2023/09/26/ai-chip-company-kneron-raises-49m-to-scale-up-its-commercial-efforts/.