By its cofounder's reckoning, Efinix is in the right place at the right time. Engineers are struggling to squeeze AI, and especially its deep learning variant, into chips where cost and power are real constraints. The startup, based in Santa Clara, Calif., plans to deliver a new kind of field-programmable gate array (FPGA) technology that is about one-quarter the size of comparable chips, consumes half the power, and is considerably less complex to construct. That combination--what Efinix calls Quantum programmable technology--could help push deep learning and AI in general away from central computers and servers and out toward where the data they work on is being generated, according to cofounder, president, and CEO Sammy Cheung. FPGA's have been using the same basic architecture for decades.