Expedera raises $20m in funding round led by indie Semiconductor

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Expedera, a US licensor of edge inference artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor intellectual property (IP), has raised $20m in Series B funding led by indie Semiconductor.

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This investment brings the company’s total funding to more than $47m and will enable Expedera to advance its high-performance, energy-efficient Neural Processing Unit (NPU) IP products and services and expand its global engineering footprint.

Gartner predicts that more than 55% of AI analysis will move to the edge by 2025 and edge devices produce vast amounts of data that can be effectively processed and analysed locally using AI, reducing the need to transmit data to centralized cloud servers.

Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), vehicle automation, consumer devices, and industrial automation require instant insights and actions, making edge AI essential for meeting stringent latency requirements.

As a result, future generations of edge AI processors will need to support emerging use cases such as stable diffusion and Large Language Models (LLM)/Large Video Models (LVM) while driving lower power consumption and higher processing efficiencies.

According to Fortune Business Insights, the global edge AI market is poised for exponential growth and is projected to grow by a 31.7% CAGR through 2029 to a more than $100bn market.

“AI is rapidly becoming one of the most important enablers for all market segments where edge computation and data intelligence is paramount, including in the automotive space,” said Donald McClymont, indie co-founder and CEO. “Expedera has quickly emerged as the market leader in enabling edge inference with its Origin NPU IP. indie is excited to be on this journey with Expedera as it unlocks multiple new applications – including ADAS and sensor fusion – with class-leading edge AI performance and efficiency.”

“Since our Series A round, Expedera has dramatically increased the capabilities of our Origin hardware and software stack, added support for leading-edge neural networks, grown our customer base, and expanded into a global company,” said Da Chuang, Expedera co-founder and CEO. “The addition of indie as lead among our new investors, and the continued support of our existing investors is a testament to the strength of Expedera’s NPU solutions.”

Expedera introduced its Origin NPU IP in 2021. This devices scales to 128 TOPS with a single engine and features highly efficient processor utilisation. Expedera has production license contracts with multiple smartphone OEMs and numerous automotive, AR/VR/MR, and consumer device chipset makers.

To date its Origin IP has been deployed in over 10m devices.