Infineon makes another move to boost edge AI applications with the acquisition of machine learning startup Imagimob
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Update time : 2023-05-19 09:28:01
German chip giant Infineon is looking to boost its artificial intelligence technology capabilities through acquisitions.
On May 17, Infineon announced that it had acquired Stockholm, Sweden-based startup Imagimob, which will allow Infineon to strengthen its machine learning solutions capabilities and expand its AI product portfolio. Details of the acquisition, including the amount, were not disclosed in the statement.
Founded in 2013, Imagimob focuses on the edge AI market and deploys miniature machine learning (tinyML) models to end devices. Its machine learning software reduces the difficulty of deploying AI in products such as smart homes, cars and healthcare, making it particularly suitable for edge-side AI deployments such as the Internet of Things. Its products can be used in scenarios such as voice control, gesture recognition, signal classification and material detection.
Currently, there are also players such as Amazon Cloud Technologies, Microsoft and IBM in the edge AI software market where Imagimob is involved.
Anders Hardebring, co-founder and CEO of Imagimob, said that becoming an important part of the Infineon ecosystem enables Imagimob to efficiently and securely deploy and implement sensing and control systems in IoT environments. Infineon, for its part, says that the results of the technology integration between the two companies will accelerate the further penetration of tinyML.
Compared to the currently popular cloud-based AI, edge AI can perform machine learning inference without the need to be connected to the Internet and has low communication costs, rapid response times and low power consumption.
Chip giants such as Intel, Qualcomm and Infineon are all bullish on AI applications outside the data centre. At an investor conference in March this year, Sandra Rivera, head of Intel's data centre and AI group, said that while GPUs or other AI chips offer the best performance on big AI models, Intel does not believe AI computing will be dominated by GPUs. She highlighted that more than 60 per cent of the AI chip market belongs to CPU-led general-purpose computing for loads such as data processing, management and movement, and that general-purpose computing can also be used for small and medium-sized AI models.
During Mobile World Congress 2023, Qualcomm demonstrated its ability to run the Stable Diffusion model on the device side of Android phones, a popular underlying generative AI model capable of creating images based on text input. The model has over 1 billion parameters and has previously been limited to running mainly in the cloud.
In fact, Infineon has been actively looking for acquisition targets, with an expected spend of billions of euros. Infineon CEO Jochen Hanebeck previously said it had seen growth momentum in areas such as electric vehicles, autonomous driving, renewable energy, data centres and the Internet of Things, and that the company may expand its portfolio in several areas, including power semiconductors, sensors, software and artificial intelligence.
Infineon's latest announced acquisition took place in April this year, when it bought power semiconductor maker GaN System for US$830 million, strengthening its investment in so-called "third-generation semiconductors".
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