AI analog chip startup Mythic raises $70 Million

By Jane Lanhee Lee

(Reuters) - Mythic, a startup making artificial intelligence chips for use in gadgets such as smart home devices or security cameras, on Tuesday said it raised $70 million in its latest round of funding.

The Redwood City, California-based chip maker started in 2012, uses analog technology for its chips rather than digital. Digital chips store and process data in 1s and 0s, while analog chips can process wave forms such as speech or video and are used to digitize speech and video into 1s and 0s.

"What it really does is allows us to get essentially GPU levels of performance — those big book sized cards burning one hundred watts and costing $4,000 dollars," said Mike Henry, co-founder and CEO of Mythic.

GPUs are digital graphic chips often used for video processing and Nvidia Corp. is the biggest player in the market.