Low-power AI computer chip startup Ceremorphic exits stealth with $50M funding

Energy-efficient artificial intelligence supercomputing chip startup Ceremorphic Inc. is exiting stealth mode today armed with $50 million in a Series A round of funding.

The company is developing what it says will be a “complete silicon system” aimed at delivering the required performance for next-generation applications such as AI model training, high-performance computing, automotive processing, drug discovery and metaverse processing.

The system is said to be based on a five-nanometer processor with a unique architecture aimed at solving problems around reliability, security and energy consumption with high-performance workloads.

Ceremorphic said its new chip leverages its own patented multithread processor technology, ThreadArch. It incorporates a “hierarchical learning processor” that ensures maximum energy efficiency by deploying the right processing system for optimal power performance operation.

Although it hasn’t revealed much about its processor so far, Ceremorphic has a good pedigree. It was founded in April 2020 by tech industry veteran Dr. Venkat Mattela, the founding chief executive officer of the wireless chipmaker Redpine Signals Inc., which sold its assets to Silicon Labs Inc. in March 2020. Redpine is notable for creating an ultralow-power wireless chipset that it said was able to reduce energy consumption by up to 26 times that of competing wireless chips.

Mattela’s aim is to bring that same level of ultralow-power consumption to AI supercomputerd. He said that with his and his colleagues’ experience of innovating in areas such as multithread processing, reliable performance circuits, low-energy interface circuits and more, Ceremorphic is well on the way to accomplishing its goals.

“The challenges this market faces with reliable performance computing cannot be solved with existing architectures, but rather need a completely new architecture built specifically to provide reliability, security, energy efficiency and scalability,” Mattela added.

Mattela is putting his money where his mouth is too, with the Series A round funded entirely by the company’s founders, many of whom were previously involved with Redpine.

Ceremorphic already holds more than 100 patents and employs more than 150 staff, but it hasn’t revealed what its next steps will be or when its first AI supercomputing chips might come to market.