Synthara raises capital and secures partnerships

Synthara has closed a successful financing round with technology investors and new research partners, as detailed in a press release. These included, among others, the Cantonal Bank of Zurich, Kreskedo AG, which specializes in investments in start-ups, High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF) from Germany, and MulticoreWare, a software firm based in California.

Synthara is developing the next generation of chips on basis of Artificial Intelligence (AI chips). These are designed for intelligent sensor applications in which inertial, audio and image sensors are used, explains Manu V. Nair, CEO and founder of the company. Such sensor applications are, for example, found in wearable devices and in the area of the Internet of Things (IoT). The chips should, according to Nair, deliver “500 times better performance”.

AI chips for these types of edge applications are “a specialized and rapidly growing multi-billion dollar market”, Nair says. Synthara is now optimally placed to create double-digit high-tech jobs in Switzerland and Germany.  

Alexander Ilic, co-founder of the ETH AI Center, who also supports Synthara’s work, regards edge-AI chips as “a key building block to enable the next generation Augmented Reality systems for the mass market”.

Synthara is a spin-off from the Institute of Neuroinformatics (INI) of the University of Zurich (UZH) and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH). The company headquartered in Zug has been established on the back of “years of interdisciplinary R&D” at the INI.