Synthara founding team
Engineering team
Kreskado announces the launch of Synthara, co-creating high-tech jobs in Switzerland along with a global coalition of investors and innovation partners
December 3, 2020
(Basel Area/Switzerland) Kreskado, an association of entrepreneurs, investors and advisors, confirms the launch of Synthara as a first deep-tech venture in Switzerland with participation from leading institutional investors and a global team of entrepreneurs and executives. Synthara is a spin-off from the UZH-ETH Institute of Neuroinformatics (INI) in Zurich developing the next generation of adaptive AI processors for edge applications.
“Founders in conservative venture ecosystems need to work harder to organize capital and commercialize their ideas,” says Sandeep Raju, Chairman. “At Kreskado, we are passionate about nurturing startups, creating jobs and working with founders to realize their full potential. Together with HTGF, Zürcher Kantonalbank, MulticoreWare, CSEM and our team of investors, it has been a privilege for us to support the development of Synthara. We are glad to have co-created many high-tech jobs as an initial contribution to the Swiss innovation ecosystem.”
“Edge AI chips are a specialized and rapidly growing multi-billion dollar market,” says Manu V. Nair, Founder and CEO at Synthara. “Our algorithm-aware chips are designed to deliver up to 500 times better performance for the next generation of smart sensor applications that use inertial measurement units, audio and image sensors.” Alessandro Aimar, Founder and CTO, adds "We are building Synthara on top of years of ground-breaking research at INI. Our solution integrates, for the first time, sparsity-aware processing with in-memory computation. Given our strong partner and investor ecosystem, we are excited about creating fit-for-purpose AI chip solutions together with our early adopter clients.”
“We are delighted to collaborate with Kreskado and support Synthara in their quest to become a global leader in AI chip solutions,” says Dr. Olaf Joeressen, Investment Manager at High-Tech Gründerfonds. “Having validated their technology with our industry and research partners, we expect them to emerge as a strong contender in the vibrant AI-on-the-edge startup ecosystem.”
“Synthara’s IP has breakthrough potential and the founders have carefully assembled a powerful ecosystem of investors, advisors and research partners,” says AGK Karunakaran, President and CEO at MulticoreWare. “I am excited to team up with Kreskado to kick this off as a collaboration pilot across the Swiss and Silicon Valley ecosystems.”
“We deeply value our collaboration with Kreskado since 2018,” add Manu and Alessandro. “As our first investor, the Kreksado team has actively guided us on company formation, fundraising, IP licensing, market validation, investor relations, complex negotiations and operational launch. Deep tech ventures need tremendous patience and perseverance - the Kreskado team understands this and walks the talk!”
“As a globally networked coalition of entrepreneurs, we are privileged to have a robust pre-launch deal pipeline,” says Shalini Chhabra, Chief Investment Officer at Kreskado. “We are building an inclusive ecosystem and warmly welcome like-minded clients, founders, investors and partners.”
Kreskado will kick off in January 2021 as an “Entrepreneurs for Entrepreneurs” coalition of entrepreneurs, investors and advisors set up as a Switzerland-based association (Verein) with members from Switzerland, Asia, Europe, UK and USA (team).
Synthara Team and Investor Profiles
Kreskado is an association of entrepreneurs, investors and advisors anchored by Kreskado AG, a private venture development studio in the Basel area. With an “Entrepreneurs for Entrepreneurs” open-architecture ecosystem, Kreskado offers founders a platform to build companies from concept to scale in a multi-year partnership with a vibrant global network of early-stage investors and advisors.
Contact: hello@kreskado.com
Synthara is a semiconductor AI company working on a new breed of edge-AI chips that eliminate the trade-off between performance and energy efficiency. Its technology is a result of years of interdisciplinary R&D in system architecture, neuroscience and neural networks at the Institute of Neuroinformatics (University of Zürich and ETH Zürich). Synthara's designs are hand-crafted for smart sensor applications whose computational workload is highly dynamic, such as wearables, IoT, and monitoring. The company has concluded an oversubscribed seed funding round and rallied a team of ambitious engineers, investors and ecosystem partners with deep roots in the industry. Synthara’s early adopter program is already seeing interest from a number of market leaders towards a first set of products in 2022.
Contact: contact-us@synthara.ai
High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF) is a seed investor that finances high-potential, tech-driven start-ups. With around EUR 900 million in total investment volume across three funds and an international network of partners, HTGF has already helped forge almost 600 start-ups since 2005. Driven by their expertise, entrepreneurial spirit and passion, its team of experienced investment managers and startup experts help guide the development of young companies. HTGF’s focus is on high-tech start-ups in the fields of digital tech, industrial technology, life sciences, chemistry and related business areas. To date, external investors have injected over EUR 2.7 billion into the HTGF portfolio via more than 1,600 follow-on financing rounds. HTGF has also successfully sold interests in more than 100 companies.
Investors in the public-private partnership include the Federal Ministry of Economics and Energy, KfW Capital, the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft and 32 companies.
Media Contact: Stefanie Grüter, T: +49 228 82300 188, s.grueter@htgf.deInvestor Contact: Dr. Olaf Joeressen, Investment Manager, T: +49 228 82300 157, o.joeressen@htgf.de
MulticoreWare is a software company with products in Broadcast, OTT, Autonomous Vehicles and Video analytics such as x265, UHDkit for Video encoding, UHDcode and VP9 for video decoding, LipSync and TextSync for Video Quality analysis.
MulticoreWare has a worldwide team of computer scientists and experts in high performance and heterogeneous computing to accelerate video, machine learning, neural networks, computer vision, compiler technologies, and more.
Contact: info@multicorewareinc.com
Zürcher Kantonalbank is a leading universal bank in the Greater Zurich Area, with national roots and international reach. It is an independent public-law institution of the Canton of Zurich and has received top ratings from the rating agencies Standard & Poor's, Moody's and Fitch (AAA or Aaa). With more than 5,000 employees, Zürcher Kantonalbank offers its clients a comprehensive range of products and services. The bank's core activities include financing businesses, asset and wealth management, trading, capital market transactions, deposits, payment transactions and card business. Zürcher Kantonalbank provides customers and distribution partners with a comprehensive range of investment and retirement provision products and services.
Contact: Media Relations Zürcher Kantonalbank+41 44 292 29 79, medien@zkb.ch
CSEM: technologies that make the difference
CSEM, founded in 1984, is a Swiss research and development center (public-private partnership) specializing in microtechnology, nanotechnology, microelectronics, system engineering, photovoltaics and communications technologies. Around 500 highly qualified specialists from various scientific and technical disciplines work for CSEM in Neuchâtel, Zurich, Muttenz, Alpnach, and Landquart.
Further information is available at www.csem.ch.
