Semiconductor startup Netrasemi raises Rs 107 Cr from Zoho Corp, Unicorn India Ventures
Netrasemi, a semiconductor startup based in Kerala, has raised Rs 107 crore ($12.5 million) in a Series A funding round led by Unicorn India Ventures and Zoho Corporations.
Prior to this, the company had raised Rs 8.3 crore in seed rounds and Rs 10 crore in a pre-Series A round from Unicorn India Ventures.
According to a press release from Netrasemi, the money raised will be used to boost marketing efforts, increase manufacturing capacity, speed up R&D projects, and meet OEMs’ compute platform needs.
Jyothis Indirabhai, Sreejith Varma, and Deepa Geetha co-founded Netrasemi in 2020 with the goal of creating system-on-chips (SoCs) that allow for optimal computing for intelligent Internet of Things products, especially when handling complex workloads like video processing.
The chips, according to Netrasemi, are made to carry out sophisticated AI-based analytics on devices directly, doing away with the need to transfer data to servers or the cloud. Netrasemi’s extensive portfolio of in-house silicon intellectual properties and energy-efficient deep-neural AI acceleration core (NPU) are the driving forces behind this capability.
The company has signed several MOUs with international partners for sample release and product R&D, finished developing two Edge-AI chips with advanced video capabilities, started developing a CCTV AI camera chip for the Indian market, and established partner agreements for evaluation boards and platform development in the past 12 months.
According to Netrasemi, two SoC products that are aimed at TSMC’s 12nm technology node and are presently in the tapeout stage have been successfully developed. The company’s goals are to finish full mask production of all three SoC families within the next 12 to 18 months and start research and development for next-generation ultra-high performance SoCs that could potentially meet the compute needs of smart NVRs and edge servers.
