Nervana Systems specializes in deep learning, developing software and custom hardware to run neural networks for images, video, text, and speech. The company initially planned to sell hardware but shifted to offering deep learning on its custom hardware as an accessible cloud service. Earlier this year Nervana released its Neon deep learning software under an open source license to encourage adoption. Its founders previously worked together at chipmaker Qualcomm, and the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center is using Neon along with other customers and partners. The company has announced multiple funding rounds and recently raised $20.5M; to date it has raised $24.4M. Nervana was started last year and is based in San Diego. Nervana System develops hardware-based machine learning tools alongside complementary software. The company is building machine learning technology that combines custom hardware and software components. Its products and technology are being targeted at a wide range of areas. Nervana is based in San Diego. In August 2014 the company raised $3.3M in a Series A led by DFJ, with participation from Allen & Co., AME Cloud Ventures, and Fuel Capital. As part of the round Steve Jurvetson of DFJ will join Nervana's board, and the company added Professor James Demmel to its advisory board. Nervana Systems focuses on hardware rather than software to boost the performance of artificial intelligence algorithms. The company is developing specialized hardware for machine-learning, aiming to build general-purpose central processing units that require less data movement between parallel processors. Co-founder Naveen Rao, a computational neuroscientist, says algorithms are improving but hardware is already the bottleneck. Rao's background includes work on UltraSparc processors at Sun Microsystems and neuromorphic research at Qualcomm, which informs the company’s approach. Nervana aims for much higher performance with lower power consumption and anticipates applications from recommendation systems to complex drug-interaction models. Financially, the company recently raised $600,000 from a group of investors to support its development efforts.

Total raised

$24M

Funding rounds

3

Latest round

Equity

Latest activity

Jun 2015