Deeptech Startup Deep Vision Raises $35 Mn Led By Tiger Global

Hyderabad and California (US)-based deeptech startup Deep Vision has raised $35 Mn in a Series B financing round, led by Tiger Global. Existing investors Exfinity Venture Partners, SiliconMotion and Western Digital also participated in the oversubscribed round. According to the startup, its leadership position in the Edge AI space is the result of cutting-edge research developed at Stanford coupled “with flawless execution by the engineering team in India as well as the cross-border collaboration between the US and India teams.”

The startup said that the funds, combined with its existing revenue streams, would help it expand its AI processor capabilities and software tools to support its rapidly growing customer base. “Further, the proceeds will help towards product development and ramp-up of the hardware manufacturing,” chief executive Ravi Annavajjhala stated.

As the pandemic shifted the gears of the world to digital, edge computing has increasingly become a necessity among industries such as manufacturing, healthcare, energy who rely on computation and storage resources of third-party apps on the location where data is produced.

Founded in 2014 by Rehan Hameed and Wajahat Qadeer during their research at Stanford University, Deep Vision develops processors for AI edge applications. It targets use cases of camera-based industries like retail, driver-monitoring systems and EV, smart city installations, drones, and factory automation. Deep Vision claims that its ARA-1 flagship chip can perform real-time video analytics as well as natural language processing for voice-controlled apps.

The startup complements its processing technology with a set of development tools that allow its customers to easily convert their neural network models into computation graphs ready to be deployed on the ARA-1 chip.

According to Scott Shleifer, partner, Tiger Global, the company is positioned for a long runway ahead, with a unique AI processor that combines “innovative software and silicon architecture for edge computing.”

Deep Vision states to be sampling its chips and have “several” customers so far. To date, the company has raised $54 Mn in venture capital.

According to Gartner’s report on edge computing trends, as of 2018, about 10% of enterprise data was being generated and processed “at the edge”. By 2025, this number is predicted to reach 75%. The market is currently dominated by startups such as Sima.ai, AIStorm, Hailo, Quadric, and Flex Logix among others.

Last month, MeitY Startup Hub entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with the IPO-bound payments platform Paytm. The collaboration will provide a platform of knowledge series, experts, resources, and a large community of stakeholders to help deeptech startups scale.

India is also currently in its nascent stages of the AI revolution and according to a report by Accenture. According to Inc42+ estimates, deeptech startups raised $136.14 Mn in 2019, representing a drop for the nascent deeptech sector. The sector had managed to enter among the top 10 choices for investors in the first half of 2020 but was phased out of the list by the end of the year.

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