Who’s Who in AI Hardware Startups
By Peter Clarke
Of those 90 startups we have identified, many will falter, others will be acquired. A handful may survive. Our analysis is here. Below is our list:
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Qualcomm’s Automotive Gambit: Doubling Down on Smartphones
What’s at stake:
Qualcomm senior vice president Nakul Duggal does not lose sleep over carmakers’ veiled threats about developing their own chips. Duggal says Qualcomm understands that different OEMs are at different levels of maturity. Chip suppliers jockeying to lead carmakers to next-generation EV/AV architectures must understand what customers want, and know every OEM’s development stage. That understanding will allow them to offer multi-generational and scalable SoCs tailored to customers’ requirements.
Inside In-Memory Computing, and Why It’s Back
By Ron Wilson
What’s at stake?
In-memory computing, an old and controversial way of organizing computer hardware to minimize energy consumption and maximize performance, has never quite broken through into the mainstream, except in some very specific applications. But the needs of edge-computing AI may provide an opportunity for a unique embodiment of this architectural idea.
Push Comes to Shove in China Tech Competition
By Bolaji Ojo
What’s at stake:
China’s role in global commerce is attracting closer scrutiny. Even as they embrace the opportunities China offers, trade partners are seeking to determine where the nation poses dangers to them.
Can AI in AVs Go Beyond ‘Perception’?
What’s at stake?
Artificial intelligence is commonly used in providing the perception abilities to highly automated vehicles. Can AI also help AVs make safer decisions in planning and control? Anyone accustomed to deterministic algorithms based on control theories will be hard to convince. But Infineon has a radical rebuttal and has been arguing its safety case with stakeholders in the automotive industry.
U.S. Semiconductor Technocracy Falls Into Place
You know a government program is institutionalized when the acronyms start flying.
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Electricity is the New Oil
By Egil Juliussen
What’s at Stake?
Transportation accounts for much of the world’s CO2 emissions due to the use of petroleum-based fuels. Reducing those emissions is among the keys to slowing climate change. One solution is substituting a carbon-neutral fuel for gasoline, diesel and their variations. The technology for doing so is on the way, but it will take tremendous amounts of renewable and inexpensive electricity to create these carbon-neutral fuels.
Will Your Next Car Replace You, or Just Improve Your Driving?
What’s at stake?
Autonomous vehicle startups have pushed the narrative that eliminating human drivers, replaced by automation, will save lives. That day might still come, but the focus of many OEMs is rapidly shifting toward a vehicle that “gets” human drivers–warts and all. At stake is whether automakers can collaborate to gather the data necessary to design a vehicle that makes people safer drivers.
U.S. Puts China in a Semiconductor Chokehold
By Bolaji Ojo
What’s at stake?
China and the West are sliding deeper into a technology Cold War with communications channels for resolving issues related to military, economic and security concerns closing fast. Failure to shift direction will result in a deeply confrontational, messy and uncertain economic and technology bifurcation.
The path forward for China’s semiconductor sector is filled with uncertainty. Its chipmakers and technology OEMs are facing a squeeze on all sides as Western governments, in aggressive actions coordinated by the United States, curb its access to design innovation and leading-edge IC production equipment as the West shifts from Asian suppliers and toward domestic manufacturing.
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Investment Opportunities Abound in Africa’s Tech Communities
By Fred Ohwahwa
What’s at stake?
A new report suggests that Africa’s digital economy is poised for a period of rapid growth that will positively impact GDP, job creation and overall economic outlook across the continent.