A growing company with operations in San Diego and Taipei is successfully securing funding and partnerships with leading companies in the electronics industry. Kneron, a specialist in efficient processors for artificial intelligence at the network edge, has recently completed a strategic investment round with Taiwan’s major manufacturing company, Foxconn, and integrated circuit developer, Winbond.

This investment follows Kneron’s previous $40 million funding round, which was led by Horizons Ventures, the investment arm of Hong Kong businessman Li Ka-Shing. Other notable investors include the Alibaba Entrepreneurship Fund, Sequoia Capital, Qualcomm, and SparkLabs Taipei.

Kneron has chosen not to reveal the exact amount of the investment received from Foxconn and Winbond, respecting the investors’ wishes, but the company’s founder and CEO, Albert Liu, confirmed to TechCrunch that the deal was valued in the “eight figures.”

Established in 2015, Kneron’s newest product is a neural processing unit designed to power advanced AI applications without the need for cloud connectivity. The company is directly competing with the chip offerings from Intel and Google, asserting that its processors consume less energy. Kneron recently strengthened its team with the addition of Davis Chen, formerly the head of engineering for Qualcomm in Taipei.

Kneron’s current clientele includes Gree, a prominent Chinese air conditioning manufacturer, and Teraki, a German provider of autonomous driving software. This new agreement also establishes Foxconn as a customer. As part of this strategic collaboration, Kneron will collaborate with Foxconn on its intelligent manufacturing initiatives and its recently launched open platform for electric vehicles, while its partnership with Winbond will concentrate on AI applications utilizing microcontroller units (MCUs) and memory computing.

“It’s relatively straightforward to integrate low-power AI chips into sensors. We understand that sensors in certain production environments are quite compact, making the use of a large GPU or CPU impractical, particularly when power usage is a critical factor,” explained Liu, who previously held research and development roles at Qualcomm and Samsung before establishing Kneron.

In contrast to some of its competitors, Kneron develops chips for a diverse array of applications, including manufacturing, smart home technology, smartphones, robotics, security systems, payment processing, and autonomous vehicles. The company not only creates the chips themselves but also the AI software embedded within them, a strategy Liu believes sets Kneron apart from Chinese AI companies such as SenseTime and Megvii, which primarily deliver AI services through the cloud.

Kneron has pursued a more measured funding strategy compared to these other companies, which have relied on substantial financing to drive rapid growth. SenseTime, founded six years ago, has raised approximately $2.6 billion, while Megvii, established nine years ago, has secured around $1.4 billion. Kneron, in comparison, has raised just over $70 million from a Series A funding round.

Similar to these Chinese AI companies, Kneron is considering an initial public offering. Liu anticipates the company will achieve profitability in 2023, stating that “this would likely be an opportune moment for us to pursue an IPO.”