Quadric raises $21 million in series B round of funding from DENSO group company NSITEXE, Inc. MegaChips also was the major investment contributor while existing investors Leawood VC, Pear VC, Uncork Capital and Cota Capital also participated in the round.
Quadric received first investment from NSITEXE in 2019 to support the development of edge processing units. In 2021, the two companies announced a joint development to create safety solutions for traditional automotive applications and for newer ones.
“As the AI market matures, businesses are under pressure to accelerate machine learning initiatives and need production-ready, easy-to-deploy AI solutions that don’t require building from the ground up,” said Tony Cannestra, director of Corporate Ventures at DENSO. “Having evaluated Quadric’s q16 processor, its ability to run many types of algorithms efficiently and flexibly allows Quadric’s platform to enable AI in new services and products. We look forward to continuing to work closely with Quadric and plan to integrate their IP into DENSO’s SoC products.”
The new funding round will help Quadric release the next version of its novel computer architecture, improve its software development kit performance and roll out IP products for integration in SoCs. The startup will also expand its team and hire more workforce in key product areas.
“It’s an exciting time to be able to partner with industry powerhouses in semiconductors and AI to bring accelerated computing to the Edge,” said Veerbhan Kheterpal, Co-founder and CEO of Quadric. “The market is saturated with rigid accelerators. Our product fills the void with a fully programmable multi-kernel processing architecture.”
