Applied Brain Research (ABR) announced it has closed an oversubscribed seed funding round to accelerate development and commercialization of its TSP1 “state space accelerator” chip and accompanying software models for edge AI inference. The round was led by Two Small Fish Ventures, and the firm’s general partner Eva Lau will join ABR’s board.
The startup positions TSP1 as a purpose-built processor for real-time time-series workloads that enable on-device automatic speech recognition, text-to-speech, and advanced digital signal processing—capabilities ABR argues have typically required cloud connectivity or more power-hungry hardware. ABR said its approach targets products where low-latency voice interaction is important but cloud dependence creates drawbacks such as delay, reliability issues, privacy concerns, and ongoing operating costs.
ABR said interest in its technology is emerging across multiple categories, including augmented reality glasses, robotics, wearables, medical devices, and automotive systems, where consistent voice experiences can be difficult to deliver when network connectivity is limited or inconsistent. The company claims full-vocabulary speech-to-text and text-to-speech are possible at under 30 milliwatts of power consumption, which it says is roughly 10 to 100 times lower than other alternatives.
ABR is engaging with partners across its target markets and will offer both the TSP1 chip and optimized software models tailored to specific application needs. The company also said it licenses its state space model software for existing hardware platforms while selling its accelerator ASIC for ultra-low-power deployments.
KEY QUOTES:
“Voice is becoming the default interface for the next wave of edge devices but using cloud voice AI solutions is a terrible experience, plagued by delays, reliability and privacy concerns while also being very expensive. And most edge devices are constrained by their battery life and computational resources limiting on-device capabilities. We’re elevating the experience of super responsive on-device voice interaction with low power solutions that also significantly reduce device operating costs.”
Kevin Conley, CEO, Applied Brain Research
“The embedded AI market is at an inflection point. Applied Brain Research has demonstrated that sophisticated voice AI doesn’t require the cloud. Their technology unlocks entirely new product categories and use cases that weren’t previously viable.”
Eva Lau, General Partner, Two Small Fish Ventures
