Kneron founder and CEO Albert Liu.
Courtesy of Kneron
Armed with an electrical engineering degree from the University of California, Los Angeles, and stints at Samsung and U.S. semiconductor giant Qualcomm, Albert Liu founded San Diego-based AI startup Kneron in 2015. Since then, it has raised more than $100 million in funding from investors including Alibaba, Foxconn, Qualcomm, Sequoia Capital and Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing’s Horizons Ventures.
Just last year, amid rising demand for AI, Kneron raised $40 million in a round led by Horizons Ventures. The funds fueled Kneron’s expansion, and the startup now has 210 employees across three offices in Taiwan and three in mainland China. “If [other companies] want to cooperate with the next big thing, then AI is the next big thing,” says Liu, 40, in a video interview.
The global AI market was valued at $62 billion last year and is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 40% from 2021 to 2028, according to Grand View Research, on continuous research and innovation for use in automotive, healthcare, retail, finance and manufacturing.
Kneron specializes in energy-efficient semiconductor chips for edge AI. Sales of its AI chips doubled last year to $11 million, says Liu, with prospects for $25 million this year. Among manufacturers, Kneron is providing an AI-enabled sensor with software for Foxconn’s electric vehicle manufacturing platform.
A new line of chips that Kneron announced November 3 will help Foxconn make its own EVs. The Foxconn deal is part of Kneron’s entry into “verticals” including automotive, Liu says.
“Foxconn is quite famous for manufacturing,” notes Liu. To compete with Tesla, he says, “we are helping you do that. Just give us an order.” Kneron is now growing its business among Japanese carmakers, Liu adds.
In a sign of more growth for Kneron, the company received permission in July from Taiwan’s Ministry of Economic Affairs to acquire Vatics, a Taiwanese developer of technology for image-signal processing, in a $10 million cash deal.
Even amid the global chip shortage, Kneron didn’t slow down. Liu says the company got around the chip shortage by ordering early, contacting contractors every couple of days and impressing the likes of TSMC and Samsung, the world’s two largest foundries, with the idea that his AI technology will keep chip orders flowing beyond the global shortage. “They will support us first compared with some unknown company because our product orders will almost triple every year,” says Liu. “They treat us as the next big superstar.”
The major foundries will accommodate clients that show commitment to sustain orders, says Brady Wang, an analyst in Taipei with the market intelligence firm Counterpoint Research. Liu says Kneron has enough chips secured through the third quarter of 2022.
Liu acknowledges that orders still come in more slowly now than before the chip crunch of 2020 and that the prices Kneron pays have gone up 10% to 20%. He’s raised his own prices as an offset and limits business mostly to larger clients. “Like TSMC, we are quite selective about the clients who we support,” he says.
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