• Tenstorrent

  Led · Series D · Dec 2024

  Tenstorrent is a Toronto-based AI hardware startup that develops AI processors and training servers. The company plans to use its new funding to build out its engineering team and to build artificial-intelligence training servers to demonstrate its technology. CEO Jim Keller, a famed microprocessor engineer, said Tenstorrent plans to release a new AI processor every two years. The company has signed customer contracts totaling nearly $150 million. Tenstorrent was founded in 2016 and is one of several startups aiming to chip away at Nvidia’s dominant AI chip market share. Other startups mentioned alongside Tenstorrent include Axelera, Etched and Groq. The company recently closed a large financing that values it at more than $2.6 billion. Tenstorrent is a Toronto, Canada–based computing company that designs and sells AI processors and licenses AI and RISC‑V IP to customers who want to own and customize their silicon. Led by CEO Jim Keller, the company brings together experts in computer architecture, ASIC design, advanced systems, and neural network compilers. It operates U.S. offices in Austin and Silicon Valley and has global offices in Belgrade, Tokyo, and Bangalore. Tenstorrent closed a $100M strategic financing up‑round. The company intends to use the funds to accelerate product development, design and development of AI chiplets, and advance its ML software roadmap. Tenstorrent is a hardware startup developing next-generation computers and AI-focused processors. Its flagship Grayskull processor was slated to go to market in the second half of 2021. The company is also launching DevCloud to let developers run models without purchasing hardware. Larger systems using Tenstorrent’s technology will be available through partners. The company said it will use the new funding to continue creating AI-focused hardware for developers. Tenstorrent is headquartered in Toronto and maintains U.S. offices in Austin and Silicon Valley. Leadership includes CEO Ljubisa Bajic and CTO Jim Keller. Tenstorrent develops Grayskull, an all-in-one AI compute system designed to accelerate model training and inference using a novel architecture that eliminates unnecessary computation. Grayskull implements conditional execution and packs 120 proprietary Tensix cores stitched with a custom torus interconnect, 120MB of local SRAM and up to 16GB external LPDDR4 across PCIe Gen4. The Tensix core combines a packet processor, a programmable SIMD processor, a dense math block, and five RISC cores to drive high utilization. In preliminary tests the system reportedly hit 368 TOPs at a 75W PCIe-card TDP and processed 23,345 sentences/sec on BERT-Base (SQuAD 1.1), a claimed 26x advantage versus competing solutions. Tenstorrent is sampling Grayskull with partners and expected the system to be production-ready in fall 2020, and plans to target datacenters, public and private cloud servers, on-premises and edge servers, and automotive markets. The company is headquartered in Toronto with offices in Austin and Silicon Valley and has raised over $34 million to date.

• Element Energy

  Participated · Series B · Nov 2023

  Element Energy, based in Menlo Park, CA, develops adaptive battery management systems using proprietary hardware and software algorithms to improve safety, intelligence, and economics of large-format battery systems. Led by CEO Dr. Tony Stratakos, the company seeks to offer its technology across first- and second-life energy storage and EV applications. Its technology is being validated at scale with a 50 MWh pilot project in the United States, expected to be completed in early 2024. Element plans to collect necessary data from the pilot, obtain UL certification, and proceed to commercialize the product. The company closed $111M in financing (equity and debt) to support deployment as the battery storage market grows. The proceeds will be used to support deployment of its adaptive battery management systems.

• bitsensing

  Led · Series A · Sep 2022

  Bitsensing develops high-resolution 4D imaging radar systems for autonomous vehicles and adjacent markets such as smart cities and digital health. Its core products include surround-detection automotive radars with range coverage of more than 300 meters and a claimed 50% improvement in detection range versus conventional radar. The company also offers TIMOS, a traffic insight monitoring sensor that integrates edge AI (powered by an Nvidia Jetson GPU) to fuse camera and radar data for traffic management; TIMOS is deployed across six countries and provides visibility across 12 lanes of traffic. Bitsensing is pursuing additional commercial applications including sleep-care monitoring for apnea and limb movements and provides APIs for integration into senior care facilities and hospitals. The startup says it is in a revenue-growth stage and aims to expand globally via strategic partnerships, hardware and software sales, data, and licensing contracts. Bitsensing was founded in 2018 in South Korea and has raised $46 million in total to date. bitsensing develops 4D imaging radar technology and sensor-fusion AI solutions intended to enable smart cities and connected living. The company builds radar solutions across business areas and has introduced a wellness solution that provides sleep analysis, lifestyle recommendations, and early-stage illness prediction from accumulated sleep data. Led by CEO Dr. Jae‑Eun Lee, bitsensing combines imaging radar hardware with software and AI to deliver sensing and analytics services. The company raised $10M in a Series A to advance its radar solutions and services. It plans to use the funds to expand its business and enter global markets. bitsensing is based in Seoul, South Korea. Bitsensing develops radar-based sensing technology that leverages radar sensors to detect targets and track and map activity in real time without creating privacy issues and while maintaining performance in harsh weather. The company's sensors are positioned for use across automotive, smart home, robotics and autonomous driving applications. Led by CEO Jae-eun Lee, Bitsensing has joined programs and partnerships including NVIDIA Inception, an Infineon partnership, Plug and Play Japan for Mobility and Plug and Play Thailand for Smart Cities. The startup intends to use its latest funding to further enhance its technology, expand offerings in key industries and grow its global presence and partnerships. Financially, Bitsensing had previously raised $1.2M in seed rounds and reports total equity financing of $7.0M following the new round. The company is based in Seoul, South Korea.

No current team members are available.