NXP Semiconductors entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Kinara, a company that produces high performance, energy-efficient, and programmable discrete neutral processing units (NPUs). These devices enable a wide range of Edge AI applications, including multi-modal generative AI models. The acquisition will be an all-cash transaction valued at $307 million and is expected to close in the first half of 2025, subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory clearances.
The future of intelligent systems will require secure, cost-effective and energy efficient AI processing at the Edge. Consequently, the Edge AI processing market is growing rapidly. Advanced AI at the Edge allows critical decisions to be made locally and independently from the Cloud, leading to faster responses, improved data privacy, and reduced costs.
Kinara’s NPUs and software enablement deliver energy-efficient AI performance across a range of neural networks, including conventional AI and generative AI (GenAI) to address the growing AI needs of industrial and automotive market.
The acquisition is expected to strengthen NXP’s ability to provide complete and scalable AI platforms, from TinyML to GenAI, bringing discrete NPUs and AI software to NXP’s portfolio of processors, connectivity, security, and advanced analog solutions.
“We want predictive maintenance to help us avoid cots, provide operational safety, and this has to happen with the right levels of privacy and security,” explained Rutger Vrijen, SVP Head of Strategy Secure Connected Edge in a briefing. “This has been a focus of NXP for a long time … What is really disrupting this space is AI.”
As partners, Kinara and NXP make it easy to pair Kinara’s NPUs with NXP’s portfolio of industrial and IoT processors. Following the acquisition, the companies will create tighter integration of solutions to deliver scalable AI platforms for a range of industrial and automotive AI inference needs.
“The industrial market is going through a transformation, with new innovations like generative AI helping to deliver major improvements in efficiency, sustainability, safety and predictability, and in many instances, unlock new use cases and functionality,” said Rafael Sotomayor, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Secure Connected Edge at NXP. “Adding Kinara’s AI capabilities to our broad intelligent Edge portfolio creates a scalable platform for new classes of AI-powered systems. Together, we can help our customers simplify complexity and accelerate time to market as they create transformative AI systems.”
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