Israeli startup NeuroBlade raises $23 million to develop AI chip

Israeli startup NeuroBlade said on Wednesday it has completed a $23 million early funding round, led by Marius Nacht, co-founder of Check Point Software Technologies, with the participation of new investor Intel Capital, Trendreports citing Reuters.

Existing investors StageOne Ventures and Grove Ventures, headed by USB flash drive inventor Dov Moran, also participated.

In addition to $4.5 million previously raised, the funds will be used by NeuroBlade to scale its workforce and ramp up efforts to bring its artificial intelligence chip to market.

The AI processor market is led by Nvidia and Intel but is becoming more crowded with startups developing chips for different markets, as well as large companies developing processors for their own needs. AI chips are used in various applications, including autonomous driving, image and speech recognition and video analysis.

The deployment and use of AI is still limited by size, price, and performance of these chips. NeuroBlade said its chip maintains a strong performance level despite being smaller and less expensive to make.