The ability for marketers to gauge intent these days is spooky. Performing a simple Google search for "hotels in Angeles City" while sitting in a cafe in Manila will suddenly surface "cheapest transport from Manila to Angeles City" ads in your Facebook stream. It knows you'll need cheap transport to get there so you can spend your money on other things. What you may find even more surprising is when you're talking to a mate on the phone about the carnal pleasures of Angeles City and suddenly STD test ads start appearing in your Twitter feed. Is your phone really listening to what you're saying?

Syntiant, a startup developing AI edge hardware for voice and sensor solutions, today closed a $35 million round. CEO Kurt Busch says the funds will be used to ramp up production throughout the remainder of 2020. According to a report published by Meticulous Research, the speech and voice recognition hardware market is expected to reach $26.8 billion by 2025. That's because devices like smart speakers, smart displays, phones, headphones, hearing aids, and laptops require low-power chips to process utterances. While some system-on-chip offerings sport coprocessors to handle voice recognition, they're often not able to accommodate multiple form factors. Three-year-old Syntiant, which is headquartered in Irvine, California, provides hardware that merges machine learning with semiconductor design for always-on voice applications.