Hailo, a pioneering chipmaker of edge AI processors, announced it had extended its series C fundraising round with an additional $120 million investment. The company also introduced its innovative Hailo-10 high-performance generative AI (GenAI) accelerators, which ushered in a time when users could own and run GenAI applications locally without registering with cloud-based GenAI services.
Current and new investors led the new funding round, which included the Zisapel family, Gil Agmon, Delek Motors, Alfred Akirov, DCLBA, Vasuki, OurCrowd, Talcar, Comasco, Automotive Equipment (AEV), and Poalim Equity. So far, the company has raised over $340 million.
The new Hailo-10 GenAI accelerator enables a spectrum of applications that maintain Hailo’s leadership in performance-to-cost and performance-to-power consumption ratios. It utilizes the same comprehensive software suite used across the Hailo-8 AI accelerators and the Hailo-15 AI vision processors, enabling seamless integration of AI capabilities across multiple edge devices and platforms.
Enabling GenAI at the edge ensures continuous access to GenAI services, regardless of network connectivity. It also obviates network latency concerns, which can otherwise impact GenAI performance. And GenAI at the edge promotes privacy by anonymizing personal data and enhances sustainability by reducing reliance on the substantial processing power of cloud data centers.
By using GenAI on edge devices, like personal computers, smart vehicles, and commercial robots, Hailo-10 enables users to own their GenAI experiences completely, making them an integral part of their daily routine. And Hailo accomplishes this immersive GenAI experience through a Hailo-10 architecture that supports maximum GenAI performance with minimum required power.
Hailo-10 can run Llama2-7B with up to 10 tokens per second (TPS) at under 5W of power. And in processing Stable Diffusion 2.1, a popular model that produces images from text prompts, Hailo-10 is rated at under 5 seconds per image in the same ultra-low power envelope.
Hailo-10 is capable of up to 40 TOPS (tera operations per second), which is a new performance standard for edge AI accelerators. And Hailo-10 is faster and more energy efficient than integrated neural processing unit (NPU) solutions and delivers at least two times more performance at half the power of Intel’s Core Ultra NPU.
The early applications of Hailo-10 GenAI accelerators will be targeting PCs and automotive infotainment systems, empowering current and future CPUs that cannot by themselves power the chatbots, copilots, personal assistants, and speech-operated operating systems that have become standard today. Hailo will start shipping samples of the Hailo-10 GenAI accelerator in Q2 of 2024.
Since being founded in Israel in 2017, Hailo has become a leading global supplier of intelligent AI chips that serves more than 300 customers around the world. And the company has offices in the United States, Europe, Japan, South Korea, China, and Taiwan.
KEY QUOTES:
“The closing of our new funding roundenables us to leverage all the exciting opportunities in our pipeline, while setting the stage for our long-term future growth. “Together with the introduction of our Hailo-10 GenAI accelerator, it strategically positions us to bring classic and generative AI to edge devices in ways that will significantly expand the reach and impact of this remarkable new technology. We designed Hailo-10 to seamlessly integrate GenAI capabilities into users’ daily lives, freeing users from cloud network constraints. “This empowers them to utilize chatbots, copilots, and other emerging content generation tools with unparalleled flexibility and immediacy, enhancing productivity and enriching lives.”
“As GenAI on the edge becomes immersive, the focus turns to handling large LLMs in the smallest possible power envelope — essentially less than five watts.”
“Whether users employ GenAI to automate real-time translation or summarization services, generate software code, or images and videos from text prompts, Hailo-10 lets them do it directly on their PCs or other edge systems, without straining the CPU or draining the battery.”
– Hailo CEO and Co-Founder Orr Danon
