Kneron, an on-device edge AI chip manufacturer, has raised USD 49 million in an extension to its Series B round from Foxconn and Alltek. This round brings the company's Series B financing to USD 97 million and its total funding to USD 190 million.

The company plans to use the funding to accelerate the development of its AI solutions in the automotive industry and expand its employee base (with a focus on its R&D division).

Analyst QuickTake : The edge AI processor space has seen a recent influx of activity within the last six months; companies like SiMa.AI , Axelera , EdgeQ , and Mythic have raised USD 13 million , USD 23 million , USD 75 million , and USD 13 million , respectively. Kneron, which is one of the most well-funded players in this space, has also been consistently raising funding over the last two years, specifically to invest in further product development. Incidentally, this funding comes just over a month after Kneron released its new “KL730” auto-grade neural processing unit (NPU) chip to support lightweight GPT large language models (LLMs).