embedUR systems spins out ModelNova to accelerate Edge AI development lifecycles

With 18 months of momentum and nine semiconductor partners, ModelNova launches as an independent company to solve Edge AI’s hardest unsolved problem — shipping AI on any silicon

ModelNova™, an Edge AI company from embedUR systems, today announced its full-scale launch as an independent company dedicated to making artificial intelligence practical on power-efficient edge devices.

As the industry accelerates toward “physical AI” — bringing intelligence out of the cloud and into the real world so that machines can sense, decide, and act on their own — the hardest problem is no longer training a model but getting it to run reliably on constrained, AI-accelerated silicon. ModelNova was created to close that gap by pairing ready-to-use building blocks with the tooling and expertise needed to take models all the way to high-volume production.

“Every technology wave lives or dies on whether developers can actually build with it, and Edge AI is at that inflection point now. The gap between a working model and a shipping product is what’s holding the industry back — ModelNova is focused on precisely that problem, and its launch is a meaningful step for the whole ecosystem,” said Michael Hurlston, President and CEO, Lumentum.

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One company, the full Edge AI lifecycle

ModelNova’s offering spans three complementary pillars:

Model Zoo — A free, open-source library of pre-trained models, datasets, and use-case blueprints, optimized for small, power-efficient devices. The Zoo gives developers a fast, no-cost starting point to validate a concept on real hardware, from a Raspberry Pi to AI-native silicon from ModelNova’s semiconductor partners, who include ARM, STMicroelectronics, Infineon, Alif Semiconductor, NXP, Silicon Labs, Renesas, Synaptics, and Ceva. ModelNova is also a Leadership Partner of the EDGE AI FOUNDATION, the global community advancing Edge AI research, education, and adoption.

Fusion Studio — A commercial development platform that orchestrates the full path from model to product across MCU and NPU silicon. Where other tools stop at compiling a model, Fusion Studio delivers system-level integration – handling the pipeline, the runtime, and the silicon-specific optimization that turns a promising prototype into a shippable product.

Licensable production-ready models — Five hardened, production-ready models. NovaEyeD (facial recognition) is purpose-built for security-sensitive applications such as access control, keyless entry, and personalization, while a suite of wireless sensing models enables applications from motion and micro-motion detection to automotive child presence detection via WiFi, UWB, mmWave, and more.

“The Alif Ensemble Series was built to bring real AI inference to power-efficient silicon, and ModelNova has been the partner proving what’s possible on it — from free Zoo models to production-ready deployments optimized for our MCUs. Their launch as an independent company gives developers an even clearer path from concept to product, and that’s exactly what this partnership has always been about,” said Reza Kazerounian, Co-Founder & President at Alif Semiconductor.

Built on two decades of embedded expertise ModelNova’s launch as an independent company reflects 18 months of momentum. Its model zoo already powers Edge AI ecosystems for two major silicon vendors, with production models proven in real-world consumer, medical, and AIoT markets.

“ModelNova began as our answer to a simple question: why is it still so hard to turn a working AI model into a real product at the edge? Establishing ModelNova as an independent company lets us go after that problem with full focus — giving developers a free place to start, a platform to build on, and production-ready models they can license and ship,”

said Rajesh Subramaniam, CEO & Founder of embedUR systems.

“When we started the EDGE AI FOUNDATION, we believed that if you brought silicon vendors, researchers, and developers together around shared knowledge, the market would respond with real companies solving real deployment problems. ModelNova’s launch as an independent company — spanning open-source models, professional tooling, and production licensing — is exactly the kind of maturation we hoped to see. It’s a proud moment for the whole Edge AI community,” said Pete Bernard, CEO of the EDGE AI FOUNDATION.

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