Competitive landscape, page-1125

Can people explain the logic in the following:

- Akida is the world's best chip and nothing can compete. It can even slice bread and bring about world peace

- Given the above, Renesas entered into an IP licensing agreement for Akida IP with BRN in December 2020 (see here)

- 7 months after Renesas licensed Akida IP (the world's best with nothing even close), Renesas decided to enter into an agreement with BrainChip competitor Syntiant to develop Voice-Controlled Multimodal AI Solution Combining Advanced Vision and Voice Technologies (see here)

- On Monday 28 March 2022, Syntiant Raises $55 Million. Rather than just using Akida IP to solve all edge AI problems, Renesas decided to throw their money down the toilet and be a significant part of this new investment in Syntiant (see here)



https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ai-chip-company-syntiant-raises-125000587.html

AI Chip Company Syntiant Raises $55 Million to Accelerate Growth

SyntiantMon, March 28, 2022, 7:50 AM·6 min readSyntiantSyntiantStrong Pipeline as Global Demand for Edge AI Rises; 20 Million+ Processors Already ShippedIRVINE, Calif., March 28, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Syntiant Corp., a provider of deep learning solutions making edge AI a reality for always-on voice, sensor, audio and image applications, today announced that it has closed $55 million in new funding, bringing the total investment to more than $100 million since the company’s founding in 2017.

Renesas Electronics Corporation (TSE:6723), Millennium Technology Value Partners and Mirae Asset Capital are among five new investors. Existing investors also participated in the raise.

“We are at a pivotal point of our company’s growth and development, having shipped more than 20 million of our Neural Decision Processors as global market demand for edge AI rises among device manufacturers,” said Kurt Busch, CEO at Syntiant. “We have built a strong customer pipeline that represents the leading suppliers, from earbuds to automobiles and most everything in between. This new round of funding will help us expedite full production deployments among more than 50 current customer engagements, as our technology continues to make edge AI accessible to any battery-powered device.”

In July 2021, Syntiant and Renesas Electronics Corporation announced a collaboration for a voice-controlled multimodal solution with Renesas’ RZ/V Series MPUs and Syntiant’s NDP120 Neural Decision Processor™ (NDP) that enables low-power contactless operation for image processing in vision AI-based IoT and edge systems.

“Our investment in Syntiant further demonstrates the synergies between our companies as we work together to deliver combined edge AI solutions to customers globally,” said Sailesh Chittipeddi, EVP, GM of IoT and Infrastructure Business Unit at Renesas. “By leveraging Syntiant’s leadership position in deep learning edge compute, our collaborations are enhancing user experiences through advanced AI-based voice and vision processing solutions across many use cases, such as security systems, personal devices, industrial and manufacturing, transportation and logistics.”

“We have researched dozens of edge AI chip companies, and Syntiant is the first we have seen to develop a software-centric turnkey solution that is already being deployed at scale,” said Jay Chong, partner at Millennium Technology Value Partners. “When it comes to semiconductors, benchmarking hardware performance is always important, but ease of integration and implementation are equally important.”