Recogni Raises $102 Million to Meet AI Applications’ Compute Demand

Recogni, an artificial intelligence (AI)-based computing firm, has closed a Series C funding round, securing $102 million.

The funding will be used to drive the development of next-generation systems for AI inference solutions that aim to significantly boost performance and power efficiency while offering the lowest total cost of ownership, the company said in a Tuesday (Feb. 20) press release.

Recogni’s scalable and power-efficient AI inference acceleration technique is poised to unlock new possibilities in AI computing, particularly in areas such as generative AI and intelligent autonomy, according to the release.

Recogni CEO Marc Bolitho highlighted the need to address key challenges in AI inference processing, such as compute capability, scalability, accuracy and energy savings. Bolitho emphasized the importance of keeping pace with the rapidly expanding AI models and evolving computing capabilities, stating in the release that Recogni is at the forefront of engineering advances that will transform data centers, enterprises, and industries like automotive and aerospace.

The company’s latest funding round was co-led by Celesta Capital and GreatPoint Ventures, according to the release.

Recogni’s AI acceleration solutions are set to address the growing compute demand for AI applications by offering 10x higher compute density, 10x lower power consumption and 13x less cost per query, Ashok Krishnamurthi, managing partner at GreatPoint Ventures, said in the release.

Sriram Viswanathan, founding managing partner at Celesta Capital and chairman of Recogni’s board of directors, said Recogni’s technology can deliver efficient inference compute solutions that address the compute needs of AI workloads.

Recogni’s first low power AI compute product, Recogni Scorpio, delivers a low-power AI compute solution with 1 Peta-Flop class inference capability, the release said.

With the Series C funding round, Recogni will further develop its AI solutions and meet the growing market demand for efficient and scalable AI computing products, per the release.

In another recent development in this space, it was reported Friday (Feb. 16) that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is seeking approval from the U.S. government for an initiative aimed at enhancing the global manufacturing of AI chips.

The shortage of graphics processing units (GPUs) essential for running AI applications has been a significant concern for OpenAI. Currently, Nvidia dominates the market with over 80% global market share.