The Biological Computing Company announced it has raised $25 million in seed funding to commercialize its neuron-based AI technology (12/02).

The funding round was led by Primary Ventures. The company plans to use the capital to open its flagship laboratory and accelerate commercialization.

“We’re excited to bring this technology to the world and show everyone that it’s possible,” said cofounder Jon Pomeraniec. “It’s not a research project. It’s commercializable.”

Using Biological Computing to Reduce AI Energy Consumption

Artificial intelligence requires significant computational power and electricity to train models.

TBC aims to reduce these demands by processing visual data through small dishes of living neurons that generate signals AI systems can interpret.

The company has developed tiny dishes, about the size of a coarse grain of salt, each containing approximately 100,000 neurons.

Each dish includes 4,096 electrodes that stimulate the neurons and record their activity.

Visual training data is converted into electrical signals readable by the neurons. The resulting neural activity is then recorded and transformed into mathematical models.

These models are described as more advanced than the standard images and videos typically used to train AI systems.

“It’s like if a picture is worth a thousand words, a neural representation of an image is worth a million words,” said cofounder Alex Ksendzovsky. “It captures complex spatial and temporal dynamics.”

Software Adapter Enhances AI Model Performance

The mathematical models generated from neuron activity are used to train what TBC calls a software “adapter.”

This adapter integrates into existing AI models as an additional processing layer.

According to the company, the adapter can double the length of video an AI model generates before performance begins to degrade.

The adapters are less than 1% the size of the AI models they enhance and do not require costly retraining.

Competing in the AI Hardware Market

TBC is among several companies working to reduce AI computing costs.

IBM has long developed AI hardware inspired by the brain’s architecture.

Chip startup Groq, which builds low-power AI-specific chips, was recently effectively acquired by Nvidia in a $20 billion deal.

Despite competition, Pomeraniec expressed confidence in TBC’s approach.

“We’re communicating with the best computer ever built,” he said. “It's been architected and evolved and perfected through nature and evolution.”

PHOTO: FREEPIK

This article was created with AI assistance.

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