As the industry grapples with the best way to accelerate AI performance to keep up with requirements from cutting-edge neural networks, there are many startup companies springing up around the world with new ideas about how this is best achieved. This sector is attracting a lot of venture capital funding and the result is a sector rich in not just cash, but in novel ideas for computing architectures. Here at EETimes we are currently tracking around 60 AI chip startups in the US, Europe and Asia, from companies reinventing programmable logic and multi-core designs, to those developing their own entirely new architectures, to those using futuristic technologies such as neuromorphic (brain-inspired) architectures and and optical computing. Here is a snapshot of ten we think show promise, or at the very least, have some interesting ideas. We've got them categorized by where in the network their products are targeted: data centers, endpoints, or AIoT devices.

One of China's most valuable artificial intelligence chipmakers Cambricon is one step closer to its initial public offering, and its prospectus reveals a rare snapshot of where Chinese companies stand in relation to their international counterparts in this critical field. Cambricon got the nod in early June to list on the Star Market, China's new Nasdaq-like stock exchange conceived to attract high-potential tech startups. This week, the chipmaker received the final green light from the China Securities Regulatory Commission, the stock market watchdog, for its first-time sale. The company is aiming to raise 2.8 billion yuan ($400 million) from its IPO and spend the proceeds on cloud-based algorithm training and inference, edge computing, and cash flow boost. It was last valued at 2.5 billion yuan in 2018 and expects its market cap to exceed 1.5 billion yuan when it floats.

A staff member displays a DJI Phantom 3 4K drone during CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas, Nevada. It may come as a surprising fact that there are now 14 Chinese AI companies valued at $1 billion or more. These unicorns are worth a combined $40.5 billion, according to a report China Money Network recently released during the World Economic Forum's Summer Davos gathering in Beijing. Just to put these numbers in perspective. Google bought DeepMind for over $500 million in 2014. Chinese voice recognition giant iFlytek Co. has a market capitalization of 63 billion yuan ($9.2 billion). Chinese AI startups raised $27.7 billion via 369 VC deals in 2017, according to a recent report from Tsinghua University. So naturally, it raises questions on if there is a bubble waiting to pop in the Chinese AI space. How could these companies, with an average age of less than five years, be worth so much money?

Cambricon Technologies has raised hundreds of millions of US dollars in a Series B round of financing, valuing the Chinese smart chipmaker at USD2.5 billion. Cambricon did not reveal the exact amount raised, state-backed The Paper reported. The Beijing-based company secured USD100 million in its A-round last August. The latest round was led by SDIC Venture Capital, a unit of state-owned investment holding group China Reform Holdings, state-owned Capital Venture Investment Fund and its sub-fund Guoxin Qidi Fund. Founded in 2016, Cambricon has said it will make up 30 percent of China's smart chip market in the next three years and supply more than one billion smart chips globally.

In NVIDIA's Q1 2019 quarter, the company once again exceeded expectations, reporting a 66% growth in total revenue, including 71% growth in its red-hot datacenter business (reaching $701M for the quarter). For NVIDIA, the "Datacenter" segment includes High-Performance Computing (HPC), datacenter-hosted graphics, and AI acceleration. While that is certainly an impressive growth rate, it is smaller than the 2-3x year-over-year growth the company has enjoyed over the last few years. This raises a few interesting questions we will examine here. Is this slow-down in growth a sea change or just the law of large numbers catching up with the business?

In July, China's government issued a sweeping new strategy with a striking aim: draw level with the US in artificial intelligence technology within three years, and become the world leader by 2030. A call for research projects from China's Ministry of Science and Technology posted online last month fills in some detail on the government's plans. And it puts Silicon Valley chipmaker Nvidia, the leading supplier of silicon for machine-learning projects, in the cross hairs. The Ministry of Science and Technology document lays out 13 "transformative" technology projects where it wants to put government money in coming months, hoping for delivery by 2021. One is to invent new chips to run artificial neural networks, the form of software propelling the AI ambitions of Google and other tech companies.

Nigel Toon, the cofounder and CEO of Graphcore, a semiconductor startup based in the U.K., recalls that only a couple of years ago many venture capitalists viewed the idea of investing in semiconductor chips as something of joke. "You'd take an idea to a meeting," he says, "and many of the partners would roll about on the floor laughing." Now some chip entrepreneurs are getting a very different reception. Instead of rolling on the floor, investors are rolling out their checkbooks. Venture capitalists have good reason to be wary of silicon, even though it gave Silicon Valley its name.