China GPU-to-AI startup lands $50 million funding
The round was led by Kuaishou, Redpoint China Ventures, 5Y Capital (formerly Morningside Venture Capital), with SAIF Partners and all existing shareholders (including Zhen Fund, Sirius Capital and Glory Ventures) as followers.
The company said the money will be used to scale up production of chip products, expand R&D and for global sales.
Founded in December 2018, Vastai has focused on AI computing, computer vision and video processing.
“The development and application of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, 5G, ultra-high definition video, live streaming, short video and video conferencing require significant processing power,” said Jun Qian, co-founder and CEO of Vastai Technologies, in a statement.
Jun Qian has 25 years of silicon design experience including 13 years with Cisco Systems designing networking ASICs and 9 years at AMD designing GPUs. Co-founder and CTO Louis Zhang has was formerly AMD Fellow with expertise in video-related technology and 23 years of SoC and IP architecture development.
Levi Liu, partner at 5Y Capital, said, “First of all, congratulations to the team at Vastai Technologies, as it’s not easy to close two consecutive rounds of funding this year. Liu added: “As AI transitions from algorithmic models at research labs to infrastructure-level applications in a variety of industries, the ability to host software algorithms on hardware is becoming more and more common, and Vastai Technologies was born out of this vision.”
Vastai performs R&D in Shanghai, Beijing and Toronto and employs more than 120 engineers.
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