Artificial Intelligence Analogue Chip Startup, Mythic Raises $70m

On Tuesday, Mythic announced that it has raised $70 million in a funding round. The company is based in Redwood, California, and makes artificial intelligence chips used in smart home devices, security cameras, fitness bands, hearing aids, robotic drones, self-driving cars, etc.

Mythic started up in 2012 and has offices in Redwood, California, and Austin, Texas. Instead of the more used digital technology, the company uses analogue technology for its chips. Explaining why the company uses analogue technology instead of digital, Mike Henry; the CEO and co-founder of Mythic said that “What it really does is allow us to get essentially GPU levels of performance- those big book-sized cards burning one hundred watts and costing $4000. With analogue compute, we could get that same compute power in a small, low power, low cost chip. Something that can go into really any device out there”

There is a huge demand for gadgets that collect data. This in turn creates a huge need for new computing power that can process data using algorithms and companies that design chips. Investors are investing in startups like Mythic with the hope that they create better and cheaper chips, and eventually become competitors with already established chipmakers.

In total, Mythic has acquired the sum of $165.2 million from funding rounds. The company plans to use the fund generated from its latest funding round for its expansion plans. The company plans on increasing production, developing its next-generation processors, and building software that will work with the chips they produce.

Mythic’s latest funding round was led by renowned multinational Investment Management Corporation; BlackRock and Hewlett Packard Enterprise. According to the CEO of Mythic, the chips they produce can process data and send concise information back to the data centre for use when required.