Silicon Catalyst Announces Six Newly Admitted Companies to Semiconductor Incubator

Silicon Valley, California April 26, 2021 - Silicon Catalyst, the world’s only incubator focused exclusively on semiconductor solutions, announces the admission of six companies into the semiconductor industry’s highly acclaimed incubation program.

The newly admitted companies include:

• AlphaICs - Next-generation AI Processor
• Lelantos - Revolutionizing the world of gas sensing
• Oculi - Image sensor products with true edge processing
• Salience Labs - Next generation photonic computing solutions
• Sonical - A computer in every ear
• Visual Dawn - Soft contact lens based Augmented Reality Platform

The mission of Silicon Catalyst is to help semiconductor startups succeed. The ecosystem that Silicon Catalyst has created lowers the capital expenses associated with the design and fabrication of silicon-based IC’s, Sensors, and MEMS devices by providing tools and services from a comprehensive network of In-Kind Partners (IKPs). The Portfolio Companies in the incubator utilize IKP tools and services including design tools, simulation software, design services, foundry PDK access and MPW runs, test program development, tester access, and banking and legal services. The world-class Silicon Catalyst network of advisors and investors further facilitates their journey from idea through prototype toward volume production.

“As we approach our seventh year of operations, we’re extremely pleased to welcome these companies to our incubator. We received more applications in our recent screening cycle than ever before, and these six companies in particular Impressed us with the quality of their technical innovations and the diversity of their target markets,” stated Nick Kepler, COO of Silicon Catalyst. “Additionally, their geographical distribution spans from the US to the UK, and also includes our first company based in India. Our Partners and ecosystem members are looking forward to contributing to the business success of our six newest companies.”

AlphaICs

AlphaICs, a fabless semiconductor company, designs and develops the best-in-class Artificial Intelligence (AI) Co-processors for delivering high-performance AI compute on edge devices. AlphaICs edge solutions include inference with learning. AlphaICs solutions are targeted toward mid-performance applications with power requirement greater than 3 watts and lower than 50 watts. The company has developed a next-generation AI Processor, called Real AI Processor (RAP™), based on a proprietary architecture. The RAP™ architecture makes use of a specialized Instruction Set Architecture (ISA), designed for accelerating AI workloads. RAP™ is highly scalable and can be scaled for mobile devices to datacenter solutions.

Lelantos

Lelantos is revolutionizing the world of gas sensing by developing a new generation of IoT compatible gas sensors targeted to high value monitoring applications in threat detection, industrial safety, environmental and air quality monitoring as well as medical diagnostics. Current gas sensors are based on optical and resistive technologies and suffer from inherent weaknesses such bulky size, high power consumption and high cost. As such they prohibit the effective monitoring in IoT oriented use cases that require large scale, pervasive sensing to be provided by autonomous, portable, battery operated sensors with wireless connectivity. In contrast, Lelantos sensors based on CMOS integrated piezoelectric resonator arrays can achieve up to 1000 times more compact size, lower power consumption and lower cost than currently utilized systems. As a foundationally superior sensing technology, Lelantos is enabling the widespread adoption of gas sensing in IoT applications and the disruption of the market providing a true chemical sensor for the Internet of Things.

Oculi

Oculi makes the SPU™ Sensing and Processing Unit, a complete edge vision system on a chip, that overcomes power, bandwidth and latency constraints. The Oculi SPU is a high performance, edge processing, low latency, low bandwidth, high speed sensor, and is an ideal solution to scale an intelligent network over a wide area for use cases in traffic monitoring, analytics and tolling. Oculi is deployed on a US public highway and partnering with various companies to deliver innovative solutions to market.

Salience Labs

Salience Labs is building a hybrid photonic-electronic chip for AI. We have designed a massively parallel, ultra-high throughput Photonic Tensor Processing Unit. Photonics allows data to be modulated at up to 100 GHZ, and allows for high levels of parallelization using multiplexing. We integrate this photonic unit into a SoC architecture designed to exploit its high throughput for AI inference. Salience Labs technology is based on decades of research collaboration between Oxford University and University of Münster, Germany.

Sonical
Gary Spittle - CEO
www.sonical.ai
gary.spittle@sonical.ai

Sonical is revolutionizing the way we hear. In the same way you use apps on your phone, Sonical is putting apps in your ears. To make this possible we are designing and building the world’s first ear computer that has the capabilities and performance for next generation ear worn products. To make our intuitive platform accessible we are creating EarOS to unlock thousands of existing and new developers. Our ear worn solutions will enable everyone to have a personalized hearing experience and to control how they hear the world using AI and advanced audio processing.

Visual Dawn
Trevor Squier - CEO
www.visualdawn.com
trevor@visualdawn.com

“Soft Contact Lens Based Augmented Reality Platform”

Visual Dawn is developing a contact lens based AR hardware platform that relies upon the same hydrogel material used for corrective vision contact and sets the gold-standard for comfort. Our system is enabled by a biocompatible battery. Our biocompatible battery leverages a proprietary chemistry that eliminates the need for toxic electrolyte solution and electrode materials. Further, our chemistry is stable and doesn't exhibit the same catastrophic failure modes seen in lithium based consumer batteries, namely fire and explosion. Our lens is designed to be disposable, with an 8-hour useful battery life.

Call for “Fast Track” Applicants

Entrepreneurial teams developing innovative semiconductor or MEMS products are encouraged to contact Silicon Catalyst to learn more about the comprehensive selection of products and services available to companies in the Incubator. The application deadline for our newly instituted “Fast Track” screening and review process is May 30, 2021. More detailed information about the application process is available at www.siliconcatalyst.com/application

About Silicon Catalyst

Silicon Catalyst is the world’s only incubator focused exclusively on accelerating solutions in silicon (including IP, MEMS & sensors), building a coalition of in-kind and strategic partners to dramatically reduce the cost and complexity of development. More than 400 startup companies have engaged with Silicon Catalyst since April 2015, with a total of 37 startup and early-stage companies admitted to the incubator. With a world-class network of mentors to advise startups, Silicon Catalyst is helping new semiconductor companies address the challenges in moving from idea to realization. The incubator/accelerator supplies startups with a path to design tools, silicon devices, networking, access to funding, banking and marketing acumen to successfully launch and grow their companies’ novel technology solutions. The Silicon Catalyst Angels was established in July 2019 as a separate organization to provide access to seed and Series A funding for Silicon Catalyst portfolio companies.

More information is available at www.siliconcatalystangels.com.