TORONTO, July 13, 2020 – Today Untether AI announced it has closed an additional $7 million USD funding led by Radical Ventures with participation by Intel Capital, both existing investors. Additionally, it has added two senior executives to its management team, Robert Beachler as VP of Product and Alex Grbic, PhD as VP of Software Engineering.
With this latest funding round the company will bring to production its world-leading ultra-efficient, high-performance AI chips to enable new frontiers in AI applications. By combining the power efficiency of at-memory computation with the robustness of digital processing, Untether AI has developed a groundbreaking new chip architecture for neural net inference that eliminates the data movement bottleneck that costs energy and performance in traditional architectures.
“The continued support of our investors signifies the strength of our technology and progress towards production,” said Arun Iyengar, President and CEO of Untether AI. “This funding enables us to go to market this year with our groundbreaking AI chip.”
“Untether is delivering a powerful AI chip capable of supporting the next generation of AI computing,” commented Tomi Poutanen, co-founder of Radical Ventures and board member of Untether AI. “To be able to execute on a design of this complexity is a testament to the strength of the Untether AI team.”
Bolstering its go to market plans, the company has appointed Robert Beachler as the Vice President of Product. A silicon valley veteran, Mr. Beachler brings invaluable experience in the development and marketing of market-defining products in Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), software tools, vision processors and artificial intelligence acceleration chips. Most recently he was a senior executive in charge of marketing and business development at AI pioneers Analog Inference and Brainchip Inc. Prior companies included Xilinx, Stretch (acquired by Exar) and Altera (acquired by Intel). He holds a BSEE from The Ohio State University. “At-memory computation will revolutionize AI inference acceleration,” commented Mr. Beachler. “I’m thrilled to bring this product to market.”
For AI acceleration, the software design flow to optimize neural networks for the underlying chip architecture is critical. To lead this effort the company has appointed Alex Grbic, PhD, as the Vice President of Software Engineering. A highly skilled software and semiconductor executive, Mr. Grbic most recently was the CTO of Deloitte’s Artificial Intelligence practice in Canada and Deloitte’s Global Alliances organization. Previously he had a storied career at Altera (acquired by Intel) and later at Intel, having led product, applications and software development teams. He holds a PhD in Computer Engineering from the University of Toronto. “Our technology will change how AI inference solutions are developed and optimized for high performance and efficiency,” said Mr. Grbic. “I am excited to join the management team.”
About Untether AI
Untether AI® provides energy-centric AI inference acceleration from the edge to the cloud, supporting any type of neural network model. With its at-memory compute architecture, Untether AI has solved the data movement bottleneck that costs energy and performance in traditional CPUs and GPUs, resulting in high-performance, low-latency neural network inference acceleration without sacrificing accuracy. Untether AI embodies its technology in runAI® and speedAI™ devices, tsunAImi® acceleration cards, and its imAIgine® Software Development Kit. Founded in Toronto in 2018, Untether AI is funded by CPPIB, GM Ventures, Intel Capital, Radical Ventures, and Tracker Capital. More information can be found at www.untether.ai.
All references to Untether AI trademarks are the property of Untether AI. All other trademarks mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.