Blaize raises $71 million in Series D round led by Franklin Templeton, Temasek

AI computing innovator revolutionizing edge and automotive computing platform Blaize on Wednesday announced it has raised $71 million in a Series D funding round led by a new investor Franklin Templeton and existing investor Temasek.

The company has been planning to strengthen its talent base in India by hiring engineers and AI technology experts across functions including hardware design, software development, verification, research, and customer services.

With this funding, Blaize will be able to expand its engineering and customer service teams in Hyderabad over the next 12 - 18 months to accelerate the product roadmap and rapidly scale the business, according to the statement.

CEO Dinakar Munagala said Blaize would be addressing all the growing demand for higher performance, lower power, lower cost AI hardware, and transformational AI software solutions in automotive, smart retail, smart city, and industrial markets through this funding.

“We are pleased with the participation of new and existing premier investors in the Series D round. We are well-positioned to accelerate our next-generation products and sustain our lead in delivering integrated hardware and software offerings that enable true value creation for our customers, ” Dinakar Munagala, CEO, Blaize added.

Speaking about the development, JP Scandalios, senior vice president, and portfolio manager, Franklin Templeton stated, “Blaize has demonstrated the capability to enable value creation for organizations, tapping the power of AI for edge computing. We are excited to invest as Blaize leadership takes strides to realize their vision".

"Automotive, and numerous edges AI markets, such as retail and metro, hold tremendous potential for Blaize to expand on their early market position as the adoption of AI at the edge accelerates, creating a new wave of industrial systems,” he added.

Blaize, formerly Thinci, is a company that develops AI computing platforms for the automotive, smart vision, and enterprise computing markets. It was founded in 2010 and is based in El Dorado Hills, California in response to rising consumer demand for new interactive products.

The company is being headquartered in El Dorado Hills, CA and its subsidiary is in Hyderabad, India.

The company develops and provides licenses for several remarkable new technologies that bring previously unheard-of Vision Processing to a wide range of consumer devices.

Last year Blaize had successfully released and established a multi-year pipeline for the first generation Blaize AI edge computing hardware and software products for the customers who live in United States, Europe, Japan, and Asia.

Blaize had previously raised $87 million in equity funding from investors such as DENSO, Daimler, SPARX Group, Magna, Samsung Catalyst Fund, Temasek, GGV Capital, Wavemaker, and SGInnovate.

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