AI Processor Chipmaker Deep Vision Raises $35 Million in Series B Funding

Tiger Global is joined by Series A investors Exfinity Venture Partners, SiliconMotion, and Western Digital, which are also rejoining in the latest round of financing.

Deep Vision’s patented AI processor, named ARA-1, delivers a ground-breaking combination of performance, power, and price for camera-based applications like such as smart retail, driver-monitoring systems, smart city, drones, and factory automation. Although best known for its ability to perform real-time video analytics, the company’s processor also provides natural language processing (NLP) capabilities for a growing market of voice-controlled applications. Deep Vision complements its processing technology with an extremely comprehensive, flexible, and robust set of development tools that allow its customers to easily convert their neural network models into highly optimized computation graphs ready to be deployed on the ARA-1 chip.

“This investment is a resounding affirmation of Deep Vision’s tactical accomplishments and strategic direction, which are rapidly driving our company into a wide variety of applications in our key target markets,” said Ravi Annavajjhala, Deep Vision’s Chief Executive Officer. “We will now be able to significantly fortify our efforts to continue designing and building the world’s most power- and price-efficient AI inference platform as well as flawless software development tools.”

“We are excited to partner with Deep Vision. We believe that the company is positioned for a long runway ahead, with a unique AI processor that combines innovative software and silicon architecture for edge computing,” said Scott Shleifer, partner at Tiger Global.

“To improve latency and reliability for voice and other cloud services, edge products such as drones, security cameras, robots, and smart retail applications are implementing complex and robust neural networks. We expect 1.9 billion edge devices to ship with deep learning accelerators in 2025,” said Linley Gwennap, principal analyst of The Linley Group. “Within these edge AI applications, we see an increasing demand for more performance, greater accuracy, and higher resolution. This fast-growing market provides a large opportunity for Deep Vision’s AI accelerator, which offers impressive performance and low power.”

About Deep Vision, Inc.
Deep Vision, an AI semiconductor company, is developing specialized deep learning processors for the edge. The Deep Vision silicon and software deliver the power, performance, and ease of use application developers need to enable pervasive edge AI. Deep Vision’s products are based on groundbreaking research into the architecture and tools needed to build and offer the leading-edge AI processor. Application markets include smart retail, driver-monitoring systems, smart city, drones, factory automation, and more. The company was started in 2014 based on research done by the founders while at Stanford University. More information is available at www.deepvision.io.