Voice-controlled smart assistants are growing in popularity, and devices like headphones, speakers, laptops, and phones are hitting shelves with voice controls built in. As demand for these products grows, so will the demand for the hardware that makes them work.
Irvine-based chipmaker Syntiant will need to keep up. The company announced Tuesday it raised $35 million in a Series C funding round led by Microsoft’s venture fund M12 and Applied Ventures.
Syntiant also reported that it’s shipped more than one million of its NDP100 and NDP101 neural decision processors to customers. These chips allow devices to recognize and process voice controls including wake words, voice commands and speaker identification without connecting to the cloud. By processing voice commands at the device level, Syntiant helps devices react quicker and ensures that data stays secure.
Plus, these processors have an extremely small footprint — the NDP100 is 1.8 millimeters by 1.4 millimeters — and high power efficiency.
“It is a tremendous honor to know that some of the world’s leading tech investors are supporting our growth stage, as we deliver our deep learning voice solution to customers across the globe,” Syntiant CEO Kurt Busch said in a statement. “We are especially thrilled that production volumes of applications using our neural decision processors are increasing and expect orders to ramp even higher throughout the remainder of 2020, as our NDPs continue to set the standard for always-on voice as the new interface.”
In conjunction with the new funding, the company is also adding Michael Stewart of Applied Ventures to its board of directors. David Lam of Atlantic Bridge Capital will serve as a board observer.
