Bristol microcontroller designer XMOS has raised $15m (£11.5m) in its latest round of funding to provide the hardware for voice services such as Amazon’s Alexa that this week has seen new speakers launched.
“XMOS is ideally positioned at the crossover between embedded voice processing, biometrics and artificial intelligence”
German chip maker Infineon Technologies, which also has a design centre in Bristol, led the round, bringing the total investment in the company since it was created to over £67m. Additional funding came from existing investors Amadeus Capital Partners, Draper Esprit, Foundation Capital and Robert Bosch Venture Capital. Dr Hermann Houser of Amadeus sits on the XMOS board.
“The conclusion of our Series-E funding is a significant milestone for the business,” said Mark Lippett, President and CEO at XMOS (pictured above). He replaced Nigel Toon as CEO in July last year.
“XMOS is ideally positioned at the crossover between embedded voice processing, biometrics and artificial intelligence, and the funds will enable us to execute our ambitious product development plans,” said Lippett. “I am particularly delighted to welcome Infineon Technologies as a strategic investor in the business. We have worked closely with the Infineon team on groundbreaking sensor fusion technologies; the investment really strengthens our strategic partnership.”
“Through this investment, Infineon will further explore the high potential of voice control and is well positioned to address future use cases like speaker authentication or contextual awareness,” said Andreas Urschitz, President of the Power Management & Multimarket (PMM) Division at Infineon. “This was the logical next step, as we have identified HMI as a strategic growth area.”
New voice-activated speakers using Alexa and Google Home were shown at the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin this week.
There’s more details on the XMOS beam steering technology at the heart of the voice assistants at www.xmos.com
