AI startup Wave Computing announced this week that it has acquired MIPS Tech, Inc. (formerly MIPS Technologies), a global leader in RISC processor Intellectual Property (IP) and licensable CPU cores. The acquisition will accelerate Wave’s strategy of offering AI acceleration from the Datacenter to the Edge of Cloud by extending the company’s products beyond AI systems to now also include AI-enabled embedded solutions.
This is a major milestone not only in the history of our two companies, but also for the AI compute industry,” said Derek Meyer, CEO of Wave Computing. “With working DPU commercial silicon and being in the final stages of bringing our first AI systems to market, now is the time for us to expand to the Edge of Cloud. The acquisition of MIPS allows us to combine technologies to create products that will deliver a single ‘Datacenter-to-Edge’ platform ideal for AI and deep learning. We’ve already received very strong and enthusiastic support from leading suppliers and strategic partners, as they affirm the value of data scientists being able to experiment, develop, test and deploy their neural networks on a common platform spanning to the Edge of Cloud.”
The market opportunity for AI solutions is exploding. Recent estimates from market research firm Tractica show a $50B TAM for AI solutions targeting the Datacenter and On-Premise environments, and a $100B TAM for AI solutions at the Edge of Cloud. However, data scientists continue to struggle with the poor performance and lack of scalability of legacy compute architectures, which must be obtained from multiple sources, while trying to serve varying use cases. For example, Datacenter-centric AI applications today need many weeks to train using coprocessors such as GPUs, only to require a different architecture for inferencing at the Edge. The lack of a common AI platform, from Datacenter to Edge, slows market growth and reduces productivity of data scientists in fields such as autonomously driven vehicles, IoT sensors and more.
Now is the right time for Wave Computing to expand, and I am pleased to see the company further evolve and grow into an AI powerhouse,” said Dado Banatao, Chairman of Wave Computing and MIPS Technologies. “Wave’s integration of two industry-leading compute architectures in a single data plane/control plane solution – Dataflow and Von Neumann – will be truly unique and an industry-first. It will fuel new, ground-breaking innovations in AI and other fields.”
The acquisition of MIPS by Wave Computing is a bold move, and could accelerate its time to profitability and industry presence. By adding new IP to Wave’s dataflow-centric portfolio, the company has positioned itself as a much broader player in AI.”
The MIPS acquisition is both cash flow positive and accretive to Wave Computing. As a combined entity under the name Wave Computing, MIPS will operate as an IP business unit and continue to license MIPS IP solutions that can now integrate Wave’s dataflow technology. With over 350 worldwide patents and 200 licensees, the MIPS acquisition strengthens Wave’s global presence and IP portfolio. With MIPS, Wave Computing will be able to provide the industry’s broadest set of high-performance, high-efficiency training and inferencing compute solutions that scale across virtually all form factors and AI implementations.
The acquisition of MIPS by Wave Computing is a bold move, and could accelerate its time to profitability and industry presence,” said Karl Freund, Lead Analyst for HPC and Deep Learning at Moor Insights & Strategy. “By adding new IP to Wave’s dataflow-centric portfolio, the company has positioned itself as a much broader player in AI.”
