An Irvine-based startup led by former Broadcom, Mindspeed Technologies and Lantronix Inc. executives has emerged with backing from the world’s largest chipmaker and its first deal.
Syntiant Corp. raised $5 million in a series A round, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, led by Intel Capital, the venture arm of Santa Clara-based Intel Corp.
Other backers included Seraph Group, Danhua Capital and Embark Ventures.
Intel Capital Senior Director Sunil Sanghavi took a board seat as part of the transaction.
Syntiant plans to use proceeds to further develop and commercialize its first chip offerings, which use machine learning and artificial intelligence to enhance applications.
The company will target makers of sensors, drones, mobile phones, Bluetooth-powered speakers, and wearables, such as smartwatches and earbuds, a low-power product space that’s drawn fewer players. The idea is to make products smarter through AI capabilities.
“We want to do things in ultra, ultra low power,” said Chief Executive Kurt Busch, who held the same role for four years at Irvine-based networking products maker Lantronix.
He resigned from the publicly traded company in 2015 to pursue other opportunities.
“After leaving Lantronix, I started looking for where the best opportunities in tech were,” he said.
Chip-Level Smarts
Syntiant’s “analog neural network” technology enables smart devices to perform computations faster and 50 times more efficiently than traditional central processing, graphic and digital signal processors, according to the company.
That allows devices to handle newer applications, such as voice and gesture recognition, keyword spotting, speaker identification, and feature-control commands, such as those used to interact with Amazon’s Echo and Dot.
“Nobody is going after the always-on battery-powered space,” said Busch, who also held senior vice president and general manager roles at Mindspeed in Newport Beach. Since the devices are always on, they can use machine-learning chips such as Syntiant’s to improve intelligence.
Syntiant said it’s in talks with dozens of potential customers and has a development agreement with Infineon Technologies AG, a microphone technology specialist and market leader in transistors for industrial power controls, power management and chip cards.
The Neubiberg, Germany-based company posted revenue of $8.4 billion in the 12 months through September, the end of its fiscal year.
Syntiant sent its first product chip to fabrication plants in Asia in March, where they’ll be manufactured under a similar business model as those at Broadcom, Qualcomm and other fabless chipmakers.
The company held a demo last week at the Intel Capital Global Summit in Palm Springs.
Industry Expertise
Busch established the chipmaker last year with Chief Technology Officer and University of North Carolina-Charlotte professor Jeremy Holleman, who was introduced through a mutual friend.
The two set out to combine experts in AI and deep-machine learning with chip design aficionados.
Enter Chief Operating Officer Pieter Vorenkamp, Vice President of Software Stephen Bailey, and Vice President of Hardware Dave Garrett, a trio with deep ties to Broadcom. Vorenkamp and Bailey are also co-founders.
Vorenkamp spent nearly 20 years in leadership roles at Broadcom, and most recently served as senior vice president and general manager of the IP Group at San Jose-based Cadence Design Systems, where he oversaw a $200 million revenue line and 1,200 employees.
Bailey served as Broadcom’s senior technical director for 11 years, credited with developing several firsts there, including cloud host switching, a China solutions team with collaborations with Huawei Technologies and ZTE Corp., and the industry’s first 1-gigabyte and 10-gigabyte storage networks.
When Busch served as business developer manager at Analog Devices Inc. in the mid-2000s, the Massachusetts chipmaker invested in Sandburst Corp., where Bailey served as CTO.
Broadcom acquired Andover, Mass.-based Sandburst in 2006 for $77 million.
“I’ve been trying to get Steph to work with me for probably 10 years or more,” Busch said.
Garrett, an expert in digital signal processing and automated hardware design with 75 U.S. and 35 foreign patents, influenced several Broadcom products in his 10-year stint, including core design, methodology and technology, as well as securing and reviewing the company’s extensive patent portfolio.
Overlooked Niche
The company has 11 full-time and seven part-time employees based at the EvoNexus incubator at University Research Park.
“The plan is to have the center of mass in Irvine,” Busch said.
It raised about $1 million last year through friends and family and plans to launch another venture round in the next few months, Busch said.
“The initial response has been very, very good, so we’re planning on raising money again in the Q3 time frame this year so we can accelerate our schedule.”
Syntiant enters a sector crowded with newcomers and big players targeting the server market with AI chips, little to none of which are focusing on low-energy, battery-powered devices.
Sales of machine learning chipsets are projected to grow at a 42% compounded annual rate through 2024, when revenue will hit $12.2 billion, according to Tractica LLC in Boulder, Colo.
“We think this is both the largest market for AI chips, as well as the most open,” Busch said. “We feel that Syntiant will be considerably ahead of anybody else in this space.”
