Mythic Launches AI Platform and Announces $9M Funding Round to Enable Datacenter-Scale Local AI in the Smallest Form Factor on Any Device

DFJ Leads Round to Help Revolutionize Local AI Design and Performance

SAN FRANCISCO, March 22, 2017 — Mythic (formerly Isocline), a local AI platform provider, today unveiled details about its breakthrough technology platform and announced it has closed a $9 million series A funding round led by DFJ. The round included a follow-on convertible note and other participation in the round included Lux Capital, Data Collective, and AME Cloud Ventures.  The company previously relied on grants and angel investors to develop the underlying science for its platform. The new capital will be used to scale the organization’s engineering team and get the product in customers’ hands. The company also announced that Steve Jurvetson of DFJ and Shahin Farshchi of Lux Capital have joined its Board of Directors.

AI and deep learning are transforming human-like tasks such as speech, vision, language processing, threat detection, and control and are becoming an integral part of connected devices. At a time when data connections are still unreliable and constrained and even children’s toys are getting hacked, it is increasingly important to untether the AI in these devices from the cloud to make them more secure, responsive, seamless, and easily integrated. Because Mythic’s local AI platform is untethered and inherently more private, device makers, security platform, and monitoring companies see it as being transformative for their products.

Mythic was born out of the Michigan Integrated Circuits Lab at the University of Michigan in 2012 – a lab known for its world-class low power chip design and multiple venture-backed spin-outs. Co-founders Mike Henry and Dave Fick developed a new deep learning deployment (or inference) model – based on hybrid digital/analog computation– that eliminates costly processors and transfers the deep learning computations to the memory structures storing the algorithm parameters – all while extending battery life by 50x.  This design allows the company to essentially put desktop GPU compute capabilities onto a module the size of a shirt button and data-center compute capabilities onto a card-deck sized platform– offering a new level of trust and security to the growing number of smart devices on the market today.

“Other local AI solutions compromise on what consumers and commercial companies care about – battery life, throughput, and accuracy,” said Michael Henry, co-founder and CEO of Mythic. “We saw early on the opportunities afforded AI from processor-in-memory technology and new methods of computing outside of the binary 1 and 0 world. This would become a foundation for the Mythic platform that revolutionizes local AI design and performance.”

Markets that Mythic will be targeting initially include smart home, action cameras, sophisticated healthcare systems, security and monitoring for commercial and home use and drones for industrial applications. Down the road, Mythic sees interesting use cases for robotics, autonomous vehicles, AR, and VR.

“Mythic is pushing the performance boundaries of local AI so any device can become a true universal assistant,” said Steve Jurvetson, Partner at DFJ.  “The way local AI is being engineered today is equivalent to trying to make a propeller plane fly faster by stripping down cargo, or adding 18 propellers – working with technology that stalled just doesn’t make sense. Just as jet design put flight on a new trajectory, Mythic is doing the same for local AI.”

Mythic has assembled an impressive group of industry experts with the hardware and AI experience required to take its unique AI platform to market.  The company is forming engagements with early-adopter customers to field test the technology, with volume shipments projected for mid-2018.

About Mythic
Based in Austin, TX and San Francisco, CA and born out of the Integrated Circuits Lab at the University of Michigan, Mythic has developed a local AI platform, comprised of both hardware and software, that turns devices into secure and trusted intelligent assistants. Unlike traditional cloud-based AI solutions, Mythic leverages local AI to enable consumer electronics, wearable and security and monitoring manufacturers to deliver the availability, responsiveness, seamless integration and uncompromised privacy that consumers demand. The company’s investors include DFJ, Lux Capital, Data Collective, and AME Cloud Ventures.