Early-stage venture fund, parent fund is Draper Fisher Jurvetson

DFJ Mercury

Huron River Ventures invests in early-stage technologies for antiquated industries including Energy, Agriculture, and Transportation.

Huron River Ventures

Cisco is a technology company specializing in networking hardware, software, and telecommunications equipment. The company continues to offer a wide range of networking solutions, including routers, switches, network security products, wireless and mobility solutions, collaboration tools, data center technologies, and more. Cisco's products and services are still used by businesses, organizations, service providers, and individuals to build and manage networks, facilitate communication, and enhance connectivity across various industries.

Cisco

Taiwania Capital is a venture capital firm that was founded in August 2017 by the National Development Fund of the Executive Yuan of Taiwan and private enterprises. Our mission is to establish a partnership with companies worldwide and boost Taiwan’s economic growth. We focus on financial returns but more than that, by linking technology and capital, we aspire to create a robust ecosystem in Taiwan that is rooted in entrepreneurial innovation.

Taiwania Capital Management Corporation

Austin Ventures is a venture capital and private equity company that specializes in partnering with talented executives and entrepreneurs to build companies. It was founded in 1984 and headquartered in Austin, Texas.

Austin Ventures

ARM Holdings is a provider of silicon IP and custom SoCs at the heart of billions of devices. Its business model involves designing and licensing of IP rather than manufacturing and selling of actual semiconductor chips. They license IP to a network of partners and these partners utilize ARM IP designs to create and manufacture system-on-chip designs. In addition to processor IP, they provide a range of tools, physical and systems IP to enable optimized system-on-chip designs.

Arm Holdings

Tahoma Ventures offers early stage capital to IT technology startups. The investments of the company are LineRate Systems, IronCore Labs, AutoMox, Stream.io, Section.io, Kentik Technologies, Kazan Networks, Bold Metrics, IronCore Labs, Copper Labs. Tahoma Ventures is a U.S.-based company that was founded in 2013 by John Ives.

Tahoma Ventures

Kleiner Perkins is a venture capital firm specializing in investing in early-stage, growth, and incubation companies. The firm continues that legacy, investing in founders with bold ideas that span industries and continents, partnering with them from inception to IPO and beyond to maximize the potential of their ideas. They also focus on early computer firms using their devices and programming and service companies. It also invests in the digital, life sciences, and healthcare industries.

Kleiner Perkins

Osage University Partners is a venture capital firm focused on investing in startups that are commercializing university technologies. Osage partners with research universities to invest in their innovative startups shareing its investment profit with partner institutions. The firm invests in software, hardware, and life science companies at all stages of company development. To date, it has partnered with over 80 universities, including 36 of the top 50 U.S. institutions by research expenditures, and has invested in over 50 of their spinouts.

OUP (Osage University Partners)

Q Capital is part of Q.Inc. We are an early-stage hardware and enabling technologies-focussed VC firm. We invest in global IoT and technology startups out of our offices in Silicon Valley and Hong Kong. We like to provide value to our portfolio startups by sharing our engineering and manufacturing expertise, and helping them explore Asian markets including China. Our focus areas include Consumer, Home & Vehicle, HealthTech, Industry 4.0 and Enabling technologies. Current portfolio includes stellar companies such as thermoelectric energy harvesting startup Matrix Industries (founded at CalTech, backed by Khosla Ventures, 3M) and Catalia Health (backed by Khosla Ventures, IDEO) who build personal AI-enabled robots for medication adherence.

Q Venture Partners

Investing since 1991, EDBI is a Singapore-based global investor in select high-growth technology sectors ranging from Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Emerging Technology (ET), Healthcare (HC), and other strategic industries. As a value-creating investor, EDBI assists companies to achieve their ambitious goals by leveraging their broad network, resources, and expertise. With their patient capital, EDBI supports companies seeking to grow in Asia and globally through Singapore.

EDBI

Tyche Partners is a venture capital firm that focuses on investments in early and early growth stage companies with disruptive technologies. We thrive to invest in and work with entrepreneurs with big dreams and drive to change the world. We look for companies with products that can achieve 10X performance improvement and have the potential of redefine the industry landscape. We invest primarily in HardTech sectors. Some of the sectors where we have invested include: * Cloud and enterprise infrastructure * Internet of Things (IoT) and wearable devices * 3D printing and robotics * Autonomous driving and AR/VR * Semiconductors * SpaceTech We invest and collaborate with tier-one VCs. Our team work closely with entrepreneurs offering strategic and operational support and guidance and helping them to building great and exciting companies.

Tyche Partners

Ambiq Micro

Ambiq Micro is an early-stage fabless semiconductor company that is developing ultra-low-power mixed-signal solutions for a new generation of wireless electronics. Ambiq Micro was founded in 2010 on the simple yet powerful notion that extremely low-power semiconductors are the key to the future of electronics. Through the use of their pioneering ultra-low-power technology, they help innovative companies around the world develop differentiated solutions that reduce or eliminate the need for batteries, lower overall system power, and maximize industrial design flexibility.

Ambiq Micro is a semiconductor company specializing in ultra-low power microcontrollers and AI solutions for battery-powered smart devices. The company's core technology, Subthreshold Power Optimized Technology (SPOT), enables devices to operate at subthreshold power levels, significantly extending battery life. Ambiq's product lineup includes the Apollo4 Plus SoC, featuring an Arm Cortex-M4 core, two MB embedded MRAM, and 2.75 MB SRAM. This chip is designed for always-on AI applications, with current consumption as low as four μA/MHz when executing from MRAM.

Ambiq Launches AI SDK for Ultra

Fumihide Esaka: Leading Technological Innovation as Chairman & CEO at Ambiq Micro

A new generation of building blocks for emerging tech

Next-gen Semiconductors

Edge Impulse

To enable AI model deployment on Ambiq's ultra-low-power Apollo4 Plus SoC, leveraging Edge Impulse's development tools for creating scalable Edge AI solutions.

Generating, collecting, and analyzing enterprise data will never be the same.

Edge Computing

Companies that provide software that facilitates analytics, cyber security, and IoT at the edge.

Ambiq Micro is a semiconductor company specializing in ultra-low power microcontrollers and AI solutions for battery-powered smart devices. The company's core technology, Subthreshold Power Optimized Technology (SPOT), enables devices to operate at subthreshold power levels, significantly extending battery life. Ambiq's product lineup includes the Apollo4 Plus SoC, featuring an Arm Cortex-M4 core, two MB embedded MRAM, and 2.75 MB SRAM. This chip is designed for always-on AI applications, with current consumption as low as four μA/MHz when executing from MRAM.
In February 2023, Ambiq launched its Neural Spot AI SDK, which combines with the company's sub-threshold and near-threshold technologies to enable efficient AI inference on IoT devices, particularly wearables. The SDK includes optimized libraries based on CMSIS-NN, with added features for fast Fourier transforms and other functionalities. It also offers an open-source model zoo with examples for health and speech detection/processing applications. Ambiq's technology allows for more complex AI models in resource-constrained environments, as demonstrated by their internal benchmarks showing significantly lower energy consumption compared to other Cortex-M4 devices.

SiFive is a fabless semiconductor company founded in 2015 that specializes in designing processor cores and chips based on the open-source RISC-V instruction set architecture. The company provides commercial RISC-V-based platforms and custom silicon solutions, offering a range of processor core IP, development boards, and SoCs. SiFive's technology enables system designers to quickly and easily build custom chips for various applications including data centers, networking, storage, and edge computing. The company's cores offer 30-40% better power efficiency and a smaller size compared to alternatives, allowing for more cores on a chip. SiFive's online platform simplifies the process of designing and testing chips and core IP, even for those new to silicon development. In September 2020, SiFive appointed Patrick Little as President and CEO to accelerate adoption of its technology for next-generation computing solutions. As of March 2022, SiFive had a post-money valuation between USD 1-10 billion.
Key customers and partnerships
SiFive has collaborated with several high-profile organizations. In 2022, NASA announced that SiFive's RISC-V-compatible CPU cores would power its new High-Performance Spaceflight Computer, expected to deliver a 100-fold improvement in performance over its predecessor. SiFive has also worked with the Barcelona Supercomputing Center to create an open-source API for popular compilers, enabling applications to use the RISC-V Vector Extension for high-performance computing, artificial intelligence, and computer vision. The company has partnerships with major technology firms, as evidenced by its involvement in initiatives supporting RISC-V International.

SiFive

Alif Semiconductor is a supplier of 32-bit AI/ML-enabled microcontrollers (MCUs) and fusion processors. Founded in 2019, the company's flagship product line is the Ensemble family, which ranges from single-core microcontrollers to multi-core fusion processors. The Ensemble devices combine Arm Cortex-M55 MCU cores, Cortex-A32 microprocessor cores, and Ethos-U55 microNPUs for AI/ML acceleration. Alif's processors are designed to be energy efficient, utilizing the company's Autonomous Intelligent Power Management (aiPM) technology that powers on only what's needed, when needed. This allows for extended battery life in applications like wearables, security cameras, and IoT devices.
The Ensemble family includes the E1, E3, and E7 series, with the E1C serving as an entry-level option. These processors offer high AI performance combined with ultra-low power consumption. For instance, the Balletto family, announced in April 2024, is claimed to be the world's first Bluetooth Low Energy wireless microcontroller featuring hardware optimization for AI/ML workloads. It can perform up to 46 GOPS (Giga Operations Per Second) and is designed for applications such as true wireless stereo earbuds and lifestyle wristbands.
Alif's processors incorporate advanced security features, including a Secure Enclave with its own resources and a configurable secure firewall structure. The company's security architecture aims to counter and resist malicious attacks in deployed edge products. Alif Semiconductor's products are designed to enable seamless integration of technology for everyday life by focusing on low-power techniques, functional integration, accelerated AI and ML edge processing, high security, wireless connectivity, and operating system diversity.
Key customers and partnerships
Alif Semiconductor has collaborated with several companies in the semiconductor and technology sectors. In November 2022, Alif partnered with onsemi to create a camera reference design for low-power applications using machine vision. This collaboration aimed to address challenges in implementing imaging products with long battery life and localized AI/ML capabilities.
In January 2024, Alif Semiconductor and Telit Cinterion unveiled the Vision AppKit, described as the world's smartest and most efficient connected camera reference design. This kit combines Telit Cinterion's wireless technology with Alif's Ensemble E3 series MCU for on-device AI use cases like face and object detection and image classification.
Alif has also worked with Plumerai, a creator of edge AI solutions, to deploy what they claim is the world's most precise person detection on the Ensemble platform. This collaboration demonstrated the potential for accurate computer vision AI in a small form factor that can run on battery power for extended periods.

Alif Semiconductor

Atmosic Technologies is a fabless semiconductor company specializing in ultra-low-power wireless platforms for the internet of Things (IoT). The company's core focus is on developing energy-efficient solutions that reduce or eliminate battery dependency in connected devices. Atmosic's product portfolio includes system-on-chips (SoCs) based on Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) technology, enhanced with proprietary features for improved power efficiency and energy harvesting capabilities.
Atmosic's flagship products include the ATM3 and ATM33 series of Bluetooth 5.3 SoCs, which incorporate the company's Lowest Power Radio and On-demand Wake-Up technologies. These innovations enable Atmosic's chips to achieve significantly lower power consumption compared to standard Bluetooth solutions. The company's latest offering, the ATM34/e series announced in January 2024, expands its capabilities to support Matter-over-Thread protocol, providing additional flexibility for smart home applications.
The company's technology has found applications in various IoT devices, including asset trackers, beacons, remote controls, keyboards, mice, and wearables. One notable implementation is in Samsung's Galaxy SmartTag2, which utilizes Atmosic's ATM3325 SoC to achieve a 43% reduction in power consumption compared to its predecessor.
Atmosic's business model revolves around selling its SoCs to device manufacturers and providing development platforms to support integration into various IoT products. The company aims to address the growing demand for sustainable and low-maintenance IoT solutions across multiple sectors, including consumer, enterprise, healthcare, and industrial applications.
Key customers and partnerships
Atmosic has established partnerships with several companies in the IoT ecosystem. Samsung Electronics incorporated Atmosic's ATM3325 SoC into its Galaxy SmartTag2, showcasing the technology's ability to extend battery life in consumer products. In March 2023, Atmosic collaborated with Dracula Technologies to create a battery-free remote control reference design, combining Atmosic's ATM33 SoC with Dracula's organic photovoltaic technology.
The company has also partnered with Exeger, a Swedish manufacturer of solar cell technology, to develop energy harvesting solutions for IoT devices. In July 2024, Atmosic announced a partnership with blukii, a brand of hard&softWERK, to power a new Bluetooth beacon with extended battery life.
Atmosic's customer base has expanded significantly, with the company reporting a 500% increase in its customer base and a tenfold increase in shipments in January 2022. The company has also formed a partnership with Universal Electronics Inc., a global leader in universal control solutions for home entertainment and smart home devices.
In the distribution space, Atmosic partnered with Mouser Electronics in December 2023 to make its products more accessible to IoT developers worldwide. This partnership aims to accelerate the growth of sustainable IoT devices by providing immediate access to Atmosic's low-power wireless portfolio.

Atmosic

TenaFe, Inc. is a solid-state drive (SSD) controller startup that develops innovative storage technologies for data centers, edge computing, and client OEM applications. The company specializes in creating PCIe NVMe SSD controllers with advanced features. TenaFe's product lineup includes PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSD controllers designed with DRAMless architecture, such as the TC2200, which achieves transfer rates of 4.8GB/s, and the TC2201, which can reach speeds up to 7.4GB/s. For data center applications, TenaFe offers the TC2310, a PCIe Gen 5 NVMe controller that prioritizes performance, power efficiency, and low latency, with a maximum active power average of less than 20W. This controller is compatible with various form factors including E1.S, E1.L, U.2, and E3.S. TenaFe also produces the TB2200, a PCIe Gen 4 NVMe BGA SSD designed for emerging applications such as autonomous vehicles, AR/VR products, and gaming phones. This small form factor SSD is soldered down to provide vibration resistance and shock-proof capabilities. In addition to hardware, TenaFe has developed TenaFe Insight, an SSD development platform that streamlines the process from architecture design to mass production, allowing for on-site or cloud-based development and collaboration with partners. The company's technology incorporates a patented LDPC engine to improve Quality of Service, leading-edge compression algorithms to enhance endurance and capacity, and designs optimized for minimal power consumption.

TenaFe

Menlo Micro is a company that specializes in developing and manufacturing innovative microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) switches, known as the Ideal Switch technology. The company's core product offering is a range of high-performance MEMS switches that combine the benefits of mechanical relays and solid-state switches. Menlo Micro's Ideal Switch technology enables switches that are significantly smaller, faster, and more reliable than traditional electromechanical relays while providing lower power consumption and better efficiency than solid-state alternatives.
The company's product portfolio includes various switch configurations such as single-pole/single-throw (SPST), single-pole/four-throw (SP4T), and double-pole/double-throw (DPDT) switches. These switches are designed for applications across multiple industries, including industrial automation, smart building controls, energy management systems, telecommunications, aerospace and defense, medical devices, and consumer electronics.
One of Menlo Micro's flagship products is the MM9200, introduced in December 2022. This device is capable of handling 10A of current in a miniature 5mm x 5mm surface-mount package, with an ultra-low contact resistance of 0.010 ohms. The MM9200 offers fast switching speeds of 10 microseconds, a voltage standoff of ±300V, and a mechanical endurance of over 1 billion switching cycles. In March 2023, the company released the MM1200, a six-channel SPST switch designed for power and signal switching applications in both DC and AC circuits.
To support its Ideal Switch products, Menlo Micro also develops complementary technologies such as the MM101, an 8-channel low-voltage to high-voltage driver with an integrated charge pump, released in January 2023. This driver solution aims to simplify the integration of Menlo Micro's switches into various applications.
In July 2023, Menlo Micro announced plans to establish its first domestic production facility, called the Ideal Fab, in Tompkins County, New York. The company committed to investing USD 50 million in this facility over three years, with the potential for additional investments up to USD 150 million as part of a multi-year growth strategy.

Menlo Micro

Companies that develop low-power, high-performance semiconductors for sensors, wearables, and other connected devices.

Companies that develop semiconductors that can support high-bandwidth and low-latency requirements of 5G networks and other wireless communication technologies.

Companies that develop semiconductors that focus on automotive applications such as advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and autonomous driving as well as in-car entertainment and communication systems.

Companies that develop semiconductors to improve the performance of data center infrastructure.

Companies developing semiconductors for other emerging tech applications, including quantum and edge computing.

Companies in the IoT applications segment develop semiconductors for sensors, wearables, and other connected devices

Develop semiconductor materials and technologies to advance technologies such as IoT, 5G, and AutoTech

RF applications segment companies develop semiconductors for 5G networks and other wireless communication technologies

ANALYST_QUICK_TAKE

PROMINENT_CATEGORY

<div>

Edge Impulse, an ML model platform, has collaborated with semiconductor developer Ambiq to facilitate AI model deployment on Ambiq's Apollo4 Plus System-on-Chip (SoC). This partnership integrates Ambiq's SPOT platform with Edge Impulse's tools, aiding developers in creating scalable Edge AI solutions.

</div> Analyst QuickTake: 
 Edge AI model deployment focuses on running AI models directly on devices at the edge of networks, reducing latency and enabling real-time processing without relying heavily on cloud infrastructure. Recent developments in the space include ZEDEDA’s <a href="https: 
//sp-edge.com/updates/33945"> partnerships with Edge Impulse </a> to automate AI model development and deployment at scale and Edge Impulse’s <a href="https: 
//sp-edge.com/updates/33966"> partnership with Ceva </a> to develop, train, and deploy embedded ML applications.

Ambiq Micro

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