Fotonation develops energy-efficient perception AI chip
The company has completed a pre-A funding round, led by Enterprise Ireland and Silicon Gardens, supplemented by other business angels
The capital is intended to accelerate the development of TriSilica, an ultra-energy-efficient perception AI chip. Specifically, the completion of the MPW prototype TS-210 will be financed.
CEO Petronel Bigioi sees the participation of a European venture capital investor and the Irish government as an important step towards positioning Fotonation in the European AI hardware market. Since its realignment in Q3 2024, the company has been working on design wins with much of the original team, addressing the need for specialized sensor processing chipsets for ultra-low power, perception-based AI applications.
According to Silicon Gardens, TriSilica combines hardware-accelerated edge AI with image processing and multimodal sensing directly in the device, with a focus on privacy-friendly applications. Enterprise Ireland's investment underlines the expansion of the semiconductor and advanced technology ecosystem in Ireland.
