The financing, which was oversubscribed, brings the total capital invested to $16.3 million.
The company’s AI and edge data processing software makes applications and algorithms run 10X more efficiently in cars and Internet of Things (IoT) devices, while preserving the data quality and accuracy required for training and running machine learning models.
Teraki enables edge devices to do more without increasing hardware resource requirements and costs.
The round of funding has been led by Horizons Ventures, joined by strategic investors including a leading Japanese technology company; US-based State Auto Labs Fund - managed by Rev1 Ventures; Bright Success Capital; and Castor Ventures. Existing investors Paladin Capital Group and innogy Ventures also participated.
The investment will be used to accelerate Teraki’s current focus on the $395 billion automotive electronics market, as well as to expand into sectors facing a similar rise in data demands in tightly constrained computing and communications components, including IoT, drones, robotics and others. The company’s partnerships with Microsoft and Infineon highlight the relevance of Teraki software to these markets for leading cloud players and global producers of edge chipsets.
Gartner forecasts that 20.4 billion connected things will be deployed by 2020, opening opportunities for increased efficiencies through automation and autonomous control. However, IoT devices are typically small with constraints on battery life, CPU performance, data storage and communications bandwidth within the device and to the cloud. These challenges are similar to those encountered in the automotive industry. Teraki’s software enables these devices to do 10X more, communicate 10X more efficiently and accelerate AI and machine learning up to 10X faster.
“We will use these funds to propel Teraki into new areas outside of automotive with significant recurring revenues as clients start large scale deployments of our technology,” said Dr. Daniel Richart, CEO and co-founder of Teraki. “These funds will also enable us to fulfill demand from our existing automotive manufacturing and supplier customers for high volume production series orders.”
Other uses of the funds include further growing the current team of 40 employees, expanding into the U.S. and Asia, and accelerating the product roadmap. As part of the expansion into Asia the company recently opened offices in Seoul and Tokyo.
Teraki has a number of engagements with automotive OEMs, Tier 1 suppliers and semiconductor customers.
