Intel Capital, the corporate venturing arm of semiconductor technology producer Intel, will lead a $100m series A+ round for China-based artificial intelligence chip developer Horizon Robotics, Bloomberg reported yesterday.
The unit’s contribution to the round will form part of the $60m of investments in 15 data-focused startups it disclosed yesterday. It has now provided a total of $566m for companies in 2017.
Wendell Brooks, president of Intel Capital, said: “By 2020, every autonomous vehicle on the road will create 4 TB of data per day. A million self-driving cars will create the same amount of data every day as 3 billion people.
“As Intel transitions to a data company, Intel Capital is actively investing in startups across the technology spectrum that can help expand the data ecosystem and pathfind important new technologies.”
Horizon Robotics is developing low-power, low-cost and high-performance processing units that will be used in artificial intelligence products.
The series A+ round also includes Harvest Investments, Hillhouse Capital, Wu Capital, Linear Ventures and Morningside Venture Capital, and is expected to close at $100m by December 2017.
Kai Yu, Horizon’s founder and chief executive, told Bloomberg: “The money will last us until our next big milestone, which is a serious deployment of our products on cars.
“If we can prove that one car model can be done successfully we can expand very quickly.”
Horizon has not revealed details of its past funding, but its website lists Sequoia Capital, GSR Ventures, Innovation Works, ZhenFund, Tsing Capital, Vertex Ventures and entrepreneur Yuri Milner as investors as well as Morningside, Hillhouse, Linear Venture and Wu Capital.
Intel Capital’s investments also involved it leading an $8.5m series A round for EchoPixel, the US-based creator of an interactive virtual reality software platform for healthcare professionals.
Semiconductor producer Lam Research and texture compression software provider Binomial also invested in the round, as did existing investors Aurus Capital, Runa Capital and Harris & Harris Group.
EchoPixel had raised about $4m, according to securities filings and press reports, when a regulatory filing in March this year indicated it had secured a further $6m, though it is unclear whether that capital formed part of its series A round.
Intel Capital also led an $8m series A round for US-based malware analysis and detection software provider Intezer that included electronics producer Samsung’s corporate venturing unit, Samsung Next, and venture capital firm Magma Venture Partners.
Intezer will use the funding to expand its international sales operation. Samsung Next had led the startup’s $2m seed round in December 2016, participating alongside several angel investors.
US-based text analytics platform developer Amenity Analytics meanwhile added Intel Capital to a $7.6m series A round that already included VC fund State of Mind Ventures.
Amenity, which is working on software that can sift through unstructured data to identify signals that action is required, will put the cash toward product development, sales and marketing.
Intel Capital led a $4.6m series A round for AdHawk Microsystems, the Canada-based creator of a camera-free eye tracking system, that also featured VC firm Brightspark Ventures and AdHawk’s founders.
AdHawk is developing tiny eye-tracking modules that work instead of cameras, using less power with a level of accuracy the startup claims can detect where a viewer’s eyes will look 50 milliseconds in advance.
Intel Capital and VC firm Nexus Venture Partners also co-led a $1m seed round for TileDB, a US-based startup that developed its multi-dimensional array data management system at the Intel Science and Technology Center for Big Data, at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The other companies to receive funding from Intel Capital as part of the initiative include US-based service robot developer Bossa Nova Robotics, US-based distributed data engine provider Reniac and Trace, the US-based creator of an artificial intelligence platform for sports media.
Israel-based data centre security software provider Alcide, US-based, hacker-powered security testing platform developer Synack and Eclypsium, a US-based firmware threat protection startup that closed $2.3m in funding earlier this month, also secured investment.