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Qualcomm Ventures, the venture capital branch of the chip maker, plans to invest up to $ 100 million in artificial intelligence.
More specifically, Qualcomm indicates that it will bring capital to startups that build an artificial intelligence on device, ie an artificial intelligence that runs on the end device, such as a smartphone or a vehicle, rather only in the cloud. The director of investments at Qualcomm, Albert Wang (pictured), said that the integrated AI was the future.
"The treatment of AI today requires a lot of calculation," Wang told TechCrunch. "When you talk to Alexa, nothing is processed on your device, it is transferred to the cloud and is truncated. This poses some problems: performance is degrading, it consumes a lot of bandwidth and there are privacy issues. Imagine you have an Alexa who is more private and friendly, you ask the questions and can get the answers instantly. It does not take the round trip to the cloud. "
Qualcomm has already made AI investments from its evergreen private equity fund, including SenseTime, a Chinese face recognition company for AI, and Cruise, acquired by GM, are developing an AI-enabled standalone driving technology. The first AI fund investment was made in AnyVision, a Tel Aviv-based start-up working on face, body and object recognition technology. Qualcomm participated in the $ 28 million Series A round of financing, which was led by Bosch in July.
Venture capitalists typically give money to 12 to 15 startups a year. As for the AI fund, the number of companies it supports is not exactly right, but says its investments will be between $ 1 million and $ 10 million per transaction.
Qualcomm generally does not reserve capital for specialized funds, preferring to rally behind its ever-green flagship vehicle. The company has, however, launched a digital health care fund, which has mobilized capital from Fitbit, among others. As for AI, Wang says they bring a rather unique set of resources to the table.
"Qualcomm occupies a very important position on the mobile platform and is gaining ground in the field of IoT. So there are many technology partnerships we can offer, a lot of market information that we can provide both from a hardware and software point of view. exposure, in general, we have a fairly large portfolio of companies. "
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