AI sensor startup AIStorm has raised $13.2 million in Series A financing from biometrics supplier Egis Technology Inc., image sensor maker TowerJazz, food preparation equipment giant Meyer Corporation, and digital health firm Linear Dimensions Semiconductor Inc., according to a press release.
“This investment will help us accelerate our engineering & go-to-market efforts to bring a new type of machine learning to the edge. AIStorm’s revolutionary approach allows implementation of edge solutions in lower-cost analog technologies. The result is a cost savings of five to ten times compared to GPUs — without any compromise in performance,” David Schie, CEO of AIStorm, said in the press release.
Advances in sensor information through artificial intelligence are anticipated to decrease the cost and security risk that comes with the processing of analog sensor data, an issue that AIStorm circumvents by processing sensor data directly in its native analog form, in real time.
“The reaction time saved by AIStorm’s approach can mean the difference between an advanced driver-assistance system detecting an object and safely stopping versus a lethal collision.”
“The reaction time saved by AIStorm’s approach can mean the difference between an advanced driver-assistance system detecting an object and safely stopping versus a lethal collision,” said Russell Ellwanger, CEO of TowerJazz.
“Edge applications must process huge amounts of data generated by sensors. Digitizing that data takes time, which means that these applications don’t have time to intelligently select data from the sensor data stream, and instead have to collect volumes of data and process it later. For the first time, AIStorm’s approach allows us to intelligently prune data from the sensor stream in real time and keep up with the massive sensor input tasks,” said Todd Lin, COO of Egis Technology Inc.
“It makes sense to combine the AI processing with the imager and skip the costly digitization process. For our customers, this will open up new possibilities in smart, event-driven operation and high-speed processing at the edge,” said Dr. Avi Strum, SVP/GM of the sensors business unit of TowerJazz.
