Mauna Kea Semiconductors (MKSemi) designs low-power ultra-wideband (UWB) system-on-chip products to enable high-precision ranging and location for IoT and consumer devices. The company launched the MK8000 SoC, which it describes as the world’s lowest-power, highest-integrated UWB chip and is now available to partners and customers. MK8000 is promoted for ultra-low power consumption (reported 43mA@3V in RX), the widest frequency band, a high level of integration to lower BOM, and an intelligent signal processor that improves compute efficiency roughly 10x. MKSemi says the chip enables tiny-battery devices and accelerates OEM/ODM deployment of location and direction-finding solutions. The company is partnering with Infineon Technologies and ThinkSeed Systems to combine MK8000 with Infineon’s Bluetooth LE MCU and to qualify designs for industrial and automotive markets. Management states the technology is already being integrated with tier-one smartphone OEMs and targets smart homes, cities, automobiles, wearables and health monitoring use cases amid a rapidly growing UWB market.

Total raised

$13M

Funding rounds

1

Latest round

Series A

Latest activity

Jan 2022