Hi everyone,

This month, we wanted to share an update on EnCharge AI, our portfolio company that has the potential to redefine industry standards for AI compute efficiency. EnCharge’s technology is paving the way for a new era where AI can be more widely and effectively used in everyday applications by solving several cost, scale, and experience challenges associated with datacenters.

While we’ve seen heavy emphasis on datacenters to power AI applications, EnCharge’s approach aims to decentralize AI by bringing those next-gen applications to personal mobile devices like PCs and smartphones. Reducing reliance on datacenters for AI applications can lower costs, lower energy intensity and related strain on power grids, and address hardware supply chain issues, while also improving user experience with improved security and increased processing speeds.

In addition to remaining focused on developing new commercial customer engagements, EnCharge was recently recognized for its potential to provide lasting AI compute superiority to the U.S. government. Last month, EnCharge and Princeton University announced a $18.6M grant from the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to fund a multi-year collaboration to develop advanced in-memory processors for advanced computing and defense applications.

In December, EnCharge expanded its leadership team and closed an additional $22.6M in financing from VentureTech Alliance (the VC arm of TSMC), RTX Ventures (formerly known as Raytheon), and ACVC Partners, bringing total funding to ~$68M of total capital, including ~$23M of nondilutive funding to support its full-stack AI chipset.

Today, EnCharge’s team of leaders in AI and computing includes nearly 50 industry veterans with deep expertise in hardware and software development from companies including AMD, Google, IBM, Intel, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Qualcomm.  

EnCharge’s in-memory-computing based AI processor offers a major advantage in energy efficiency and performance. Its solution achieves 20 times greater efficiency compared to current leading solutions from companies like NVIDIA, Qualcomm, and Intel, with 150 TOPS/watt of efficiency for AI inference, significantly outperforming the industry standard of 5-10 TOPS/watt.

This level of efficiency opens new possibilities in client computing — laptops, tablets, and phones — making AI more accessible and sustainable. This is a massive, rapidly growing market opportunity of more than 100M units by 2025.

The “secret sauce” behind EnCharge’s technology is built on charge-based analog in-memory computing innovations, developed over six years of extensive research at Princeton University. This approach bypasses the limitations of traditional current-based analog computing approaches pursued by other companies by using stable, geometry-based capacitors integrated within standard CMOS technology for AI-centric computing operations. Building on this exclusive innovation, EnCharge has developed the necessary architecture and software to create a fully programmable solution that can deliver best-in-class performance across AI models and functions, from large language models to computer vision.

Exciting up-and-coming AI applications like text-to-video generation, “second brain” notetaking apps, real-time frame generation and video upscaling, and fully interactive video game NPCs, also will require a large amount of local AI computation capabilities that simply cannot be supported by technologies, such as GPUs, and on current industry roadmaps.

EnCharge’s roadmap includes expanding from client PCs to mobile markets and eventually datacenters, aligning with industry needs for power and space-efficient AI processing. The team is currently developing a product to launch in 2025 that is easily integrable into laptops and will significantly enhance AI capability over existing options on the market today. EnCharge is also working closely with the PC ecosystem (processor vendors, operating system companies, and independent software vendors) to enable the mass adoption of EnCharge’s hardware within the next two years through deep integration into the most popular laptop processors.

We are excited about the forward momentum at EnCharge as the demand for more performant and efficient AI models continues to skyrocket, and we look forward to sharing additional updates from the company this year. 

Best,

Jimmy Kan, Partner

PORTFOLIO COMPANY UPDATES

Aspinity Launched New AML100 Near-Zero Power Monitoring Solutions for Automotive Security

Aspinity, the leader in near-zero power AI solutions, announced the availability of a suite of new analogML™ algorithms for parked vehicle monitoring. Aspinity also launched a new dashcam evaluation kit that enables the accurate detection and recording of security events for weeks or more without impacting the vehicle’s battery or requiring an external power source.

Always-on sensing, which requires data collection and processing, can be particularly challenging as it can deplete the battery when a vehicle is parked. Aspinity’s solution uses an acoustic-only trigger with analogML algorithms that have been trained specifically to identify automotive security events, which vastly outperforms traditional solutions in detecting relevant vehicle events, such as the jiggling of the door handle or unintentional contact from a neighboring car door, without impacting the battery. 

The news was featured in AutoTechInsight, EDN, EE World, Electronic Products & Technology, and more.

Xendee Partnered with Arizona State University to Power Island Communities in Fiji

Xendee, the leading distributed energy system and Electric Vehicle fast-charging design and operation platform, announced a partnership with Arizona State University to bring access to sustainable energy to remote communities in Fiji that lack reliable and affordable electricity.

Xendee was chosen to provide techno-economic and electrical modeling software for this project. During the planning phases, Xendee helped to calculate tailored energy systems to the specific needs of each community and optimize the overall design of the mini-grids, including system sizing, dispatch, and cost. Starting with a geospatial assessment of 300 isolated communities, the team completed in-person community engagement and detailed feasibility assessments for a prioritized set of 75 mini-grid sites. The work has significant potential to uplift communities through economic development, healthcare access, and education opportunities.

This project was covered by Microgrid Knowledge and Renewables News.

 Liquid Instruments Launched Industry-First Capabilities for Optics Research on Apple Vision Pro

Liquid Instruments, a leading innovator of reconfigurable test instrumentation, announced that its Moku platform is available for Apple Vision Pro, which launches the first interactive 3D test system for optics researchers. Integrating the versatile Moku platform with a camera-based vision system helps users maximize efficiency in the lab. 

Moku harnesses the processing power of field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) to deliver an entire suite of instruments — from bench essentials like an oscilloscope to advanced tools like a lock-in amplifier — and quickly adapt to new technologies. With visionOS, Moku users have a new, interactive way to access instruments in addition to existing Windows, macOS, iPadOS, and Python support.

Users can now leverage hand and eye gestures to interact with multiple instruments and accelerate testing in optics, photonics, and quantum research labs — with no monitors required. For users in laser labs who are already accustomed to protective goggles, Moku for visionOS brings helpful new capabilities to their gear to deliver the ultimate optics lab experience.

This news was covered by SDxCentral and Apple World Today.

BioSkryb Genomics Launched New Whole Genome and Transcriptome Core Kits and Presented Novel Research on Tumor Heterogeneity at AACR 2024

BioSkryb Genomics, a company ushering in the next generation of single-cell technology, announced the commercial launch of its new ResolveDNA® Whole Genome and ResolveOME™ Whole Genome and Transcriptome Single-Cell Core Kits, which are now available to U.S. and international customers.

The new single-cell core kits leverage the power of primary template-directed amplification (PTA) in an end-to-end kitted workflow that provides amplification and library preparation reagents, sequencing adapters, and the BaseJumper® bioinformatics platform. The company’s foundational PTA chemistry enables high-resolution single-cell DNA insights with 97% genomic coverage and 93% allelic balance. As part of these new kit configurations, total workflow time has been reduced to under eight hours for both products.

The news was covered by Genome Web.

Additionally, BioSkryb highlighted how its ResolveDNA and ResolveOME single-cell assays can unravel the complexities of tumor evolution at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting 2024 in San Diego.

BioSkryb's technology was featured in:

• Exhibitor Spotlight Theater Presentation: “Single-cell mapping of lineage and phenotype in human somatic evolution,” presented by Dr. Dan Landau, New York Genome Center 
• Poster Presentation: “Inter- and intratumoral PIK3CA subclonal diversity in breast cancer contextualized by single-cell multiomics,” presented by Dr. Jon Zawistowski 

ImmunoScape Presented Three Posters on its TCR Pipeline and Discovery Platform at AACR 2024

ImmunoScape, a biotechnology company focused on next-generation T Cell receptor (TCR)-based immunotherapies, announced that three abstracts were accepted for poster presentations at AACR. 

ImmunoScape's poster presentations included: 

• "Discovery and development of T cell receptors targeting MAGE family antigens for adoptive T cell therapy against solid tumors,” presented by Juliana Velez Lujan, Ph.D., ImmunoScape, Senior Scientist 
• "Deep Immunomics pipeline for discovery and validation of novel cancer-specific T cell receptors,” presented by Hannah Fields, ImmunoScape, Scientist 
• "A validated bioinformatics tool-set for predicting TCR specificity,” presented by Andreas Wilm, ImmunoScape, Director of Computational Biology

ANZU PARTNERS UPDATES

Upcoming Events

Anzu representatives will be attending the following events in the coming weeks: 

April

• Metalcasting Congress 2024 – April 23-25 in Milwaukee
• Innovation Zero – April 30-May 1 in London

May

• NREL Industry Growth Forum 2024 – May 1-3 in Denver
• CleanPower 2024 – May 6-9 in Minneapolis
• High Tech Venture Days – May 7-8 in Washington D.C.
• Display Week – May 12-27 in San Jose
• Asia Summit on Global Heath – May 16-17 in Hong Kong
• ESS Safety & Reliability Forum – May 14-16 in Richland, WA
• ARPA-E Innovation Summit – May 22-24 in Dallas
• American Society for Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting – May 31-June 4 in Chicago

Please reach out to info@anzupartners.com if you’re interested in meeting with us at any of these events.

ADDITIONAL ANZU & PC MEDIA COVERAGE

• 6K, AM Batteries, Niron Magnetics, and Xendee were each named one of Time and Statista’s Top GreenTech Companies of 2024. 
• GelSight and 6K collaborated to write an article for Quality Magazine on the importance of digital surface inspection in additive manufacturing. 
• EnCharge AI was covered by ZDNet in an article about how its breakthrough chip technology that melds analog and digital computing could make generative AI more efficient. 
• Voltaiq CEO Tal Sholklapper was quoted in a recent article in The Information’s newsletter, The Electric, on carmakers slashing EV production. 
• OTI Lumionics CEO Michael Helander was a guest on The Hard Part podcast with Evan McCann to discuss the need to support Canadian startups and its VC ecosystem. 

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Browse the open roles here and learn more about joining our amazing teams.

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ABOUT ANZU PARTNERS

Anzu Partners is an investment firm that focuses on industrial and life science technology companies with the potential to transform their industries. Anzu works with entrepreneurs to develop and commercialize technological innovations by providing capital alongside deep expertise in business development, market positioning, intellectual property, global connectivity, and operations. For more information, please visit https://anzupartners. com/.