Hailo Raises $12.5 Million in Series A Round to Develop Deep Learning Chips

Plans to use the funding to further develop its deep learning processor

Tel Aviv-based deep learning startup Hailo has announced to raise $12.5m in Series A round. The company's investors include Ourcrowd.com, Maniv Mobility, the Drive accelerator fund: Next Gear as well as angel investors, Hailo Chairman Zohar Zisapel and Delek Motors CEO Gil Agmon.

Hailo plans to use the funding to augment its deep learning processor, which will deliver datacenter processing capacity to edge devices. The latest round brings the total funding raised by the company to $16 million to date.

Hailo's breakthrough deep learning processor are expected to enter the market in the first half of 2019. The processor chips would be able to run embedded AI applications on edge devices that are installed in various autonomous platforms including self-driving cars, drones, and smart home appliances such as personal assistants, smart cameras and smart TVs, alongside IoT, AR and VR platforms, wearables and security products. The company claims that the processor radically reduces size, power and cost, making it suitable for local processing of high-resolution sensory data in real-time.

"The 70-year old architecture of existing processors is inadequate to meet today's deep learning and AI processing needs," said Orr Danon, Hailo CEO. "Hailo is revolutionizing the underlying architecture of the processor to boost deep learning processing by several orders of magnitude. We have completely redesigned the pillars of computer architecture – memory, control and compute – and the relations between them."

Commenting on the development, Zohar Zisapel, Chairman of Hailo said, "In the last few years, we are witnessing a revolution in the automotive industry with the quick entry of new players and technologies into the market. The product that Hailo is developing is expected to be a key component in this revolution in which artificial intelligence is one of the building blocks."

Hailo is partnering with major players in the industry that leverages its technology to develop deep learning technologies. Eli Nir, Senior Investment Partner at OurCrowd, stated, "We are convinced that the extensive need in the market, Hailo's breakthrough technology and unique team will allow Hailo to bring the deep learning revolution to edge".