In AI chip start-up synsense in China

Mer­ck, a sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny, today announced its invest­ment in Syn-Sense (for­mer­ly known as AI-CTX), a neu­ro­mor­phic com­put­ing start­up based in Chi­na and Switzer­land. The startup’s AI (arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence) proces­sors and sen­sors pro­vide an unprece­dent­ed com­bi­na­tion of ultra-low pow­er con­sump­tion and low laten­cy for a broad range of edge appli­ca­tions in smart home, smart secu­ri­ty, autonomous dri­ving, drones or robots.

“This is a great first invest­ment by our new­ly estab­lished Chi­na Seed Fund and will fur­ther strength­en our ties with local entre­pre­neurs and investors,” said Isabel de Paoli, Chief Strat­e­gy Offi­cer at Mer­ck. “Our plan to be an active play­er in the Chi­na inno­va­tion land­scape is pay­ing off with this excit­ing step, which nice­ly com­ple­ments our activ­i­ties in our Per­for­mance Mate­ri­als busi­ness sector.”

Mer­ck invest­ed in Syn-Sense via its Chi­na Seed Fund, which was estab­lished in Octo­ber 2019 by its cor­po­rate strate­gic invest­ment arm M Ven­tures and the Mer­ck Chi­na Inno­va­tion Hub. The Series A invest­ment round was led by CTC Cap­i­tal and joined by M Ven­tures, CAS Star, Eco­v­acs Robot­ics, Yund­ing and Archer Investment.

Neu­ro­mor­phic com­put­ing is gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ered a key enabler of next-gen­er­a­tion AI. As a spin-off from the joint Insti­tute of Neu­roin­for­mat­ics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Zurich and ETH Zurich (lab of co-founder Pro­fes­sor Gia­co­mo Indi­veri), Syn-Sense is lever­ag­ing the vast know-how of one of the lead­ing aca­d­e­m­ic research insti­tu­tions in this space. Its neu­ro­mor­phic chip design is inspired by the human brain fea­tur­ing mas­sive par­al­lelism and asyn­chro­nous log­ic in order to over­come the von Neu­man bot­tle­neck that slows down AI on con­ven­tion­al com­put­ing sys­tems. The imple­men­ta­tion with Spik­ing Neur­al Net­works (SNN) enables, for exam­ple, ultra-low pow­er dynam­ic vision pro­cess­ing at less than 1 mW (mil­li­watt).

The cur­rent deal marks the third invest­ment of M Ven­tures in the advanced com­put­ing tech­nolo­gies space in less than a year, fol­low­ing invest­ments in AI chip design com­pa­ny Memry‑X, Ann Arbor, Michi­gan, USA, and quan­tum com­put­ing start­up See QC, Elms­ford, New York, USA. This under­lines the impor­tance of the field for Mer­ck. With its broad foot­print as a lead­ing sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny, Mer­ck has a unique expo­sure to next-gen­er­a­tion com­put­ing. Merck’s involve­ment spans the entire val­ue chain from being a sup­pli­er to the semi­con­duc­tor indus­try to an end-user in phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and biotech research & development.