Foreign media: Take stock of 20 analog, MEMS and sensor startups worth watching in 2022

According to microgrid news, eeNews Analog recently released a large inventory of start-ups in the field of analog, MEMS and sensors in 2022, with a total of 20 companies on the list, of which nine companies are new to the list.

Image source: eeNews Analog

New entrants include companies active in the following areas: MEMS microphones, speakers and scanners; quantum image sensing and capacitive touch sensing; analog sub-threshold AI processing and neuromorphic processing; digital modulation radar and graphene materials.

Below is a list of these twenty companies.

Agile Analog Ltd. (headquarters: Cambridge, UK) is a simulated IP company founded in 2017 by Chief Technology Officer Michael Hulse, led by CEO Tim Ramsdale and Chairman Peter Hutton. Ramsdale and Hutton were previously senior executives at ARM. The company offers a configurable, multi-process simulation IP platform approach called Compososa, which allows analog IP to be optimized for multiple foundries and nodes.

Analog Inference Inc. (headquarters: Santa Clara, California) was founded in 2018 and is developing circuits for deep sub-threshold analog memory computations. Founded by a veteran of the computer industry and supported by Khosla Ventures. The company is currently developing its first-generation product.

Founded in 2018, Celera Inc. (headquarters: San Jose, Calif.) has developed an AI-based software platform for automating custom analog/mixed-signal IC development that the company claims will increase R&D efficiency by 100 times.

E-peas SA (HQ: Mont-Saint-Guibert, Belgium) is a fabless semiconductor company that aims to develop low-power circuits such as energy harvester interfaces, microcontrollers, and image sensors. Founded in 2014, the company's vision is to solve IoT applications in two ways; by increasing the energy collected and reducing the energy consumption of circuit blocks.

Exo Inc. (headquarters: Redwood City, California) was founded in 2015 by serial entrepreneur and visionary Janusz Bryzek to develop handheld ultrasound imagers. The company has developed a piezoelectric micromechanical ultrasonic transducer (pMUT) that is combined with an ultrasound imaging algorithm and a "deep learning" processor.

Flusso Ltd. (headquarters: Cambridge, UK) was founded in 2016 as a spin-off from the University of Cambridge. The company uses the CMOS MEMS platform and takes advantage of the programmability and configurability that is allowed. Packaged and assembled using microelectronics, the flowmeter produces tens of millions of parts per month while providing performance and scalability.

Gigajot Technology Inc. (headquarters: Pasadena, California) was founded in 2017 as a spin-off from Dartmouth College to develop and commercialize the next generation of image sensors, the Quantum Image Sensor (QIS). QIS is the next generation of image sensors where high-speed single-photon detection is used to unlock new image capture capabilities. The company was founded by two Doctoral students at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and Dartmouth College Professor Eric Fossum, widely considered the father of the CMOS image sensor.

GMEMS Technology Inc. (headquarters: Milpitas, California) was founded in 2016 with a team of professors from Stanford University and the University of California, Davis. GMEMS started as a MEMS design service and has jumped to become a product supplier. GMEMS installed a custom production process in Tower's 0.18 micron CMOS manufacturing process, from where MEMS microphones were supplied.

Haila Technologies Inc. (headquarters: Montreal, Canada) was founded in 2017 to modulate digital sensor data on top of environmental signals of multiple protocols using backscattering while maintaining signal integrity. This allows HaiLa sensor tags to be used with multiple wireless protocols, reducing deployment costs and risks, the company said. The company's first product is RLWi4, a 2.4GHz ISM band Wi-Fi front-end IP core that uses backscatter to transmit data at speeds of up to 1 Mbit per second.

Newsight Imaging Ltd. (Headquarters: Ness Ziona, Israel) focuses on image sensors for 3D machine vision and spectral analysis applications, serving a variety of verticals including: automotive, robotics, smart cities, mobile, industrial, health. The company developed the NSI1000 depth sensor and the reference design for solid-state enhanced time-of-flight (eToF) lidar.

Founded in 2018, OQmented GmbH (headquarters: Itzehoe, Germany) is dedicated to the development and sale of MEMS mirrors and laser scanning technology. OQmented wants to provide technology, automotive and optical companies with components for consumer AR, robotics and 3D camera applications. The company was spun off from the Fraunhofer Institute, which first studied bubble MEMS technology.

Paragraf Ltd. (headquarters: Cambridge, UK) was established in 2017 as a graphene-based supplier of electronic equipment. Paragraf has developed processes for the production of single-atom-thick two-dimensional materials, including graphene, such as silicon, silicon carbide, sapphire and gallium nitride, directly on crystal substrates. The company also supplies the GHS series of high-performance graphene Hall sensors.

Founded in 2017, proteanTecs Ltd. (HQ: Haifa, Israel) has developed a cloud-based platform that combines data created in a chip's embedded agent with machine learning to make predictions before failures occur. Gain insights after chip design, chip production, system production, and deployment. The level of General Purpose Chip Telemetry (UCT) is determined by the coverage and variety of integrated agents. It is suitable for chip developers, system builders, and service providers.

SigmaSense LLC (HQ: Austin, Texas) was founded in 2015 to provide digital sensing technology to address the noise and tuning challenges of touch sensors. The SigmaTouch controller utilizes capacitive imaging to create an intuitive machine interface. SigmaSense technology supports access to many types of information about mobile devices, large interactive display interactions, and provides customized sensing applications.

SiLC Technologies Inc. (headquarters: Monrovia, California) focuses on human-like perception in areas such as autonomous driving, robotics, and smart cameras. SiLC offers AMF Continuous Wave (FMCW) imaging systems that provide 4D sensing on chips designed to operate at 1550 nm wavelengths. Founded in 2018 by silicon photonics industry veterans, SiLC uses a proprietary silicon-based semiconductor manufacturing process to manufacture its chips and standard automated IC-style assembly process.

SynSense GmbH (headquarters: Zurich, Switzerland) was founded in 2017 under the name aiCTX to develop neuromorphic computations, often based on visual data. The company offers dedicated mixed-signal neuromorphic processors that combine ultra-low power consumption with low latency. SynSense was spun off from the Institute of Neuroinformatics at the University of Zurich in March 2017 and was backed by venture capital from China.

Syntiant Corp. (headquarters: Irvine, California) is a startup founded in 2017 that is developing an analog neural network processor that runs in flash memory. Neural decision processors (NDPs) perform large-scale neural network inference while consuming 1,000 times less power than traditional CPU, GPU, and DSP solutions. NDP is suitable for continuously available battery and energy harvesting applications from mobile phones and wearables to smart sensors and drones.

Uhnder Inc. (HQ: Austin, Texas) was founded in 2015 to develop radar on-chip for cars. The company's first product was designed into the Icon radar of automotive supplier Magna. Uhnder's digital modulation radar chip integrates 192 virtual channels – jumping from 8 to 24 used in standard radar. A higher number of detections per frame makes it possible to track and classify more objects, and errors due to interference caused by too many radar signals can be reduced.

UltraSense Systems Inc. (headquarters: San Jose, California) is a startup founded in 2017 that has announced the launch of an ultrasound-based user interface. The company has developed an ultrasonic actuator/sensor that can be connected to the inner surface of the housing to create a touch user interface. MEMS-based technologies operate at megahertz frequencies. It sends and receives pressure wave signals through 5 mm of aluminum or glass.

xMEMS Lab Inc. (headquarters: Santa Clara, California) has developed a monolithic MEMS speaker for TWS and personal audio equipment. xMEMS holds 10 granted patents and more than 70 pending technology patents. The company is committed to designing advanced solutions and applications for a range of consumer electronic devices by integrating intelligent approaches with MEMS technology. (Proofreading/Hidden Drei)