AI-based computing company Recogni Inc. has secured US$102m in Series C funding, co-led by Celesta Capital and GreatPoint Ventures alongside existing investors Mayfield, DNS Capital, BMW i Ventures, and SW Mobility Fund and new investors Pledge Ventures and Tasaru Mobility Investments. Joining, with debt from HSBC Innovation Banking.
The funding will drive the development of next-generation AI inference solutions aimed at generative AI and intelligent autonomy applications. Traditional AI acceleration methods, such as GPU-based solutions in cloud data centers, face scalability and sustainability issues due to their intensive power requirements. Recogni says it seeks to improve inference processing with a scalable approach that can meet future AI computing demands without imposing burdens on infrastructure.
In December 2022, Recogni introduced Recogni Scorpio, a low-power AI compute product capable of delivering 1000 TFLOPS (1 petaflop) of inference performance, to help address power challenges.
Marc Bolitho, CEO of Recogni, said, “The critical need for solutions that directly address the key challenges in AI inference processing—compute capability, scalability, accuracy and energy savings—is more urgent than ever. Recogni is leading this transformative wave, engineering pivotal advances that will redefine data centers and enterprise and revolutionize industries like automotive and aerospace.”
Ashok Krishnamurthi, managing partner at GreatPoint Ventures, said, “When you have a solution that achieves 10x higher compute density, 10x lower power and 13x less cost per query, it’s a no-brainer to invest and help bring that solution to market.”
Sriram Viswanathan, Celesta Capital founding managing partner and chairman of Recogni’s board of directors, said, “Generative AI systems in the market today are highly inefficient and consume too much power while adding system complexity, but Recogni’s proven technology is raising the bar on power performance to address the large compute needs of AI workloads.”