Artificial intelligence computing company Blaize Inc has raised $71 million from investors including Temasek and Franklin Templeton, according to people familiar with the matter.
The El Dorado Hills, California-based company is also in early-stage talks with special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) about a potential deal that would take it public, the sources added.
Blaize previously raised $65 million in 2018, at a valuation of about $370 million from investors including Denso, Temasek, GGV Capital, and Daimler. The new series D round of funding will be primarily used to scale out the business and products development. Details on Blaize's latest valuation were not immediately available.
Blaize offers computing solutions in automotive, mobility, smart retail, security, industrial and metro market sectors. The company is looking to grow along with the transformation of electrification in the automotive industry, and the consolidation of many processes into a larger computer at the center.
Blaize initially focused on “vision processors” to speed up sensor fusion tasks before expanding to datacenters, edge infrastructure, and enterprise client devices. The company’s 16-core chips which deliver 16 TOPS of AI inference horsepower enable concurrent execution of AI models while supporting heterogeneous compute-intensive workloads.
Blaize’s founder CEO Dinakar Munagala, CTO Satyaki Koneru, were at Intel prior to starting the company, developing several generations of GPUs. In 2010, working out of a spare bedroom, they eventually gained support and funding from venture, angel, and strategic investors including Dado Banatao.
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