— CoCoPIE Secures Series A Funding To Accelerate the Landscape of Edge AI Computing —
— Federally-Funded Small Business Innovation Research Program Provides Seed Funding for R&D —
Today, CoCoPIE, the leading company that enables real-time AI for off-the-shelf mobile devices through proprietary DL compression-compilation co-design, announced a multi-million dollar Series A funding round led by Sequoia China Seed Fund. With this investment, CoCoPIE will focus on growing its customer base and investing in research & development.
“We are excited that Sequoia China Seed Fund continues to invest in CoCoPIE to further our goal in disrupting the AI landscape,” said Dr. Yanzhi Wang, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer at CoCoPIE. “This investment furthers our thesis that our software-only Compression Compilation Co-Design approach will offer new opportunities for democratizing AI capability on edge devices, while invalidating the common perception on the indispensability of special AI hardware for real-time AI on end devices. We look forward to utilizing this investment to continue expanding our software optimization toolset to enable real-time deep learning on billions of existing mobile devices to unlock a trillion-dollar market.”
“Hardware remains the major constraint for enabling real-time mobile intelligence, and CoCoPIE’s purpose-built technology is the state-of-the-art enabler of real-time AI on mobile without the need of specialty chips,” said Joe Lee, Vice President at Sequoia China Seed Fund. “We strongly believe that CoCoPIE’s technology will be an essential component in the AI software ecosystem. We are delighted to be working with a team of first-class researchers that are at the helm of creating technology that enables real-time intelligence on end devices, and with our investment, we are excited to watch CoCoPIE’s software-only compression-compilation co-design approach disrupt the AI market.”
Additionally, CoCoPIE has been awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant for $250,000. With this grant, CoCoPIE will continue to further enhance its core technology, which simultaneously optimizes model search compression for deep learning and automatic code generation for compilers to achieve the best deep neural network acceleration performance on edge devices. Small businesses with innovative science and technology solutions, and commercial potential are encouraged to apply. All proposals submitted to the NSF SBIR/STTR program, also known as America’s Seed Fund powered by NSF, undergo a rigorous merit-based review process.
“NSF is proud to support the technology of the future by thinking beyond incremental developments and funding the most creative, impactful ideas across all markets and areas of science and engineering,” said Andrea Belz, division director of the Division of Industrial Innovation and Partnerships at NSF. “With the support of our research funds, any deep technology startup or small business can guide basic science into meaningful solutions that address tremendous needs.”
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