SynSense raises US$10 million for smart vision sensor

Business news | March 28, 2023

By Peter Clarke

SynSense (Chengdu, China), a supplier of event-driven sensors, has raised US$10 million in a pre-B+ funding round.

The round was led by Ausvic Capital (Hong Kong) Ltd. and the money will be used to accelerate the mass-production of SynSense’s Speck smart vision sensor, which includes a neuromorphic AI processor. The funds will also be used to develop edge computing applications in such markets as smart homes, intelligent security, precision farming, autonomous driving, and drones.

The company states on its website: “Our technologies are not developed for military purposes and are not funded by any military.”

SynSense was founded by CEO Ning Qiao as aiCTX GmbH (Zurich, Switzerland) in 2017. Since then it has received substantial investment from China and expanded their from 2020, changed its name and is now headquartered in Chengdu.

Speck is an event-based image sensor with 320,000 neuron processor that is designed to provide real-time vision processing at milliwatt levels of power consumption. Xylo is family of devices for low-dimension neural network signal processing, which could include event recognition in audio and bio-signal processing.

SynSense has established partnerships with leading companies, including BMW, animal husbandry enterprises in China and European tech companies and innovation institutions (see Swiss-Chinese AI chip developer cuts cockpit deal with BMW). The Speck chip has entered mass production and the Xylo family is expected to enter mass production 2H23 with Xylo Audio.

“Accelerating the commercialization of neuromorphic technology has always been our key mission,” said Ning Qiao, in a statement.