Expedera Raises $20M Series B Funding Round Led By indie Semiconductor

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May 21, 2024, 08:43 ET

Expedera raises $20M in Series B led by indie Semiconductor with new and existing investors
Funds to be used to advance the company's Origin™ on-device AI processor IP products and services and expand its global footprint

SANTA CLARA, Calif., May 21, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Expedera Inc., a leading licensor of edge inference artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor intellectual property (IP), today announced it raised $20 million in Series B funding led by indie Semiconductor, with participation from prominent repeat and new industry investors. This investment, which includes converting a previous SAFE note, brings the company's total funding to more than $47M. It will enable Expedera to advance its high-performance, energy-efficient Neural Processing Unit (NPU) IP products and services and expand its global engineering footprint.

"Expedera has quickly emerged as the market leader in enabling edge inference with its Origin NPU IP. indie is excited to be on this journey with Expedera as it unlocks multiple new applications - including ADAS and sensor fusion - with class-leading edge AI performance and efficiency." ~Donald McClymont, indie co-founder and CEO

Gartner predicts that more than 55% of AI analysis will move to the edge by 2025. Edge devices produce vast amounts of data that can be effectively processed and analyzed locally using AI, reducing the need to transmit data to centralized cloud servers. Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), vehicle automation, consumer devices, and industrial automation require instant insights and actions, making edge AI essential for meeting stringent latency requirements. Future generations of edge AI processors will need to support emerging use cases such as stable diffusion and Large Language Models (LLM)/Large Video Models (LVM) while driving lower power consumption and higher processing efficiencies. According to Fortune Business Insights, the global edge AI market is poised for exponential growth, projected to grow by a 31.7% CAGR through 2029 to a more than $100B market. This strategic alignment with the future of AI technology positions Expedera at the forefront of innovation.

"AI is rapidly becoming one of the most important enablers for all market segments where edge computation and data intelligence is paramount, including in the automotive space," said Donald McClymont, indie co-founder and CEO. "Expedera has quickly emerged as the market leader in enabling edge inference with its Origin NPU IP. indie is excited to be on this journey with Expedera as it unlocks multiple new applications - including ADAS and sensor fusion - with class-leading edge AI performance and efficiency."

"Since our Series A round, Expedera has dramatically increased the capabilities of our Origin hardware and software stack, added support for leading-edge neural networks, grown our customer base, and expanded into a global company," said Da Chuang, Expedera co-founder and CEO. "The addition of indie as lead among our new investors, and the continued support of our existing investors is a testament to the strength of Expedera's NPU solutions."

Expedera made its mark on the AI industry when it introduced its Origin NPU IP in 2021. Origin IP scales to 128 TOPS with a single engine and features highly efficient processor utilization with market-leading low-power consumption while requiring minimal external memory bandwidth. Expedera has production license contracts with multiple smartphone OEMs and numerous automotive, AR/VR/MR, and consumer device chipset makers. Its Origin IP has been deployed in over 10M devices.

About Expedera

Expedera provides customizable neural engine semiconductor IP that dramatically improves performance, power, and latency while reducing cost and complexity in edge AI inference applications. Successfully deployed in well over 10 million consumer devices, Expedera's Neural Processing Unit (NPU) solutions are scalable and produce superior results in applications ranging from edge nodes and smartphones to automotive. The platform includes an easy-to-use TVM-based software stack that allows the importing of trained networks, provides various quantization options, automatic completion, compilation, estimator, and profiling tools, and supports multi-job APIs. Headquartered in Santa Clara, California, the company has engineering development centers and customer support offices in the United Kingdom, China, Japan, Taiwan, and Singapore. Visit https://www.expedera.com.

About indie

indie is empowering the Autotech revolution with next generation automotive semiconductors and software platforms. We focus on developing innovative, high-performance and energy-efficient technology for ADAS, user experience and electrification applications. Our mixed-signal SoCs enable edge sensors spanning Radar, LiDAR, Ultrasound, and Computer Vision, while our embedded system control, power management and interfacing solutions transform the in-cabin experience and accelerate increasingly automated and electrified vehicles. We are an approved vendor to Tier 1 partners and our solutions can be found in marquee automotive OEMs worldwide. Headquartered in Aliso Viejo, CA, indie has design centers and regional support offices across the United States, Canada, Argentina, Scotland, Germany, Hungary, Morocco, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Switzerland and China.