With funding led by Fine Structures Ventures, company expected to deliver ‘orders of magnitude more efficient,’ and more affordable AI processing for edge devices used in hearing aids, earbuds, security
Edge AI innovator Femtosense announced an $8 million Series A funding round led by Fine Structures Ventures. The funds will be used to accelerate the development and delivery of more efficient, lower cost and real-time artificial intelligence (AI) processing for valuable and affordable consumer electronics. Other investors in this round include J2 Ventures, Quest Venture Partners, Amino Capital, Sand Hill Angels, Gaingels and SV Pacific Ventures.
Leveraging sparse mathematics, Femtosense’s AI processing enables audio and video applications such as noise suppression and speech enhancement technologies for hearing aids and earbuds, as well as other improvements for residential/commercial security, televisions and even automotive vehicles.
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“AI has the potential to benefit us all but is too power hungry and costly to deliver sophisticated applications outside of datacenters or flagship phones,” said Femtosense CEO Sam Fok, Ph.D., who founded the company in 2018 along with fellow Stanford University Brains in Silicon Lab alumni. “We strip away the unnecessary work in AI to improve efficiency by orders of magnitude.”
One especially timely example of a life-improving application is in the growing hearing aid industry. On August 16, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) finalized a rule designed to improve access to hearing aids by reducing costs for consumers.
“With AI that requires less power, we can eliminate major paint points for hearing aid users by empowering tiny devices to selectively cancel noise,” Fok added. “We’ve also had growing interest from remote control companies interested in making less frustrating voice interfaces and home security companies interested in detecting bumps in the night. The opportunities to improve quality of life are endless.”
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“Femtosense is well positioned to capitalize on the emerging edge AI market with a team that has a core competence in a very tall technology stack from chip design to algorithm design,” said Shyam Kamadolli, Managing Director at Fine Structure Ventures, a venture capital firm affiliated with FMR LLC, the parent company of Fidelity Investments.
With this new funding and increasing interest from consumer electronics manufacturers and others, Femtosense’s products are expected to arrive in Q4 2022, with volume production planned for 2023.
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