Galway company backed by Enterprise Ireland, Silicon Gardens and angel investors as it moves TriSilica chip toward prototype stage.
Galway-based AI semiconductor company FotoNation has closed a Pre-A funding round led by Enterprise Ireland and venture capital firm Silicon Gardens, with participation from a group of angel investors.
The new capital will support the continued development of FotoNation’s TriSilica product, an ultra-low-power perception-AI chip designed for edge devices.
“This investment, from a leading European VC as well as from the Irish Government, marks a pivotal moment for our company”
The funding will be used to progress the company’s first multi-project wafer prototype, known as TS-210, a key milestone on the path to full production.
The chip is intended to deliver on-device perception and sensor processing while significantly reducing power consumption and data transfer requirements.
Designed in Ireland: 4bn devices worldwide use FotoNation chips
Petronel Bigioi, chief executive of FotoNation, said the investment reflects growing confidence in the company’s technology and long-term vision.
“This investment, from a leading European VC as well as from the Irish Government, marks a pivotal moment for our company,” Bigioi said. “On behalf of the management team, I thank our investors for their shared conviction in our long-term potential, cementing FotoNation as a leader in the European AI hardware race.”
FotoNation was re-established in the third quarter of 2024, bringing together many members of its original engineering and leadership team.
Since then, the company has secured a number of design wins and re-entered the market with a focus on ultra-low-power perceptual AI solutions. The company says the investor support reflects rising demand for dedicated hardware that can process sensor data efficiently at the edge.
Gregor Rebolj, managing partner at Silicon Gardens, said the company’s approach aligns with broader shifts in how AI is deployed in consumer and enterprise devices.
“FotoNation is building ultra-efficient, hardware-accelerated edge AI that fuses vision and multimodal sensing on device,” Rebolj said. “Their technical depth and focus on privacy-aware experiences position them to help define the post-smartphone era of AI companions, from Physical AI to perceptual intelligence.”
Enterprise Ireland, the Irish State agency responsible for supporting Irish enterprises, co-led the round and said the investment underlined FotoNation’s strategic importance to the country’s semiconductor sector, particularly in the west of Ireland.
Leo McAdams, head of Advanced Manufacturing And Lifesciences at Enterprise Ireland, said the agency is keen to support the company’s international ambitions.
“Enterprise Ireland is proud to support FotoNation’s next phase of growth, reinforcing Ireland’s advanced technology and semiconductor ecosystem,” McAdams said. “This investment underscores our commitment to helping ambitious Irish companies scale globally, create high‑value jobs across all regions, and build long‑term economic resilience. We look forward to working closely with FotoNation as it seeks to expand internationally.”
Founded in Ireland, FotoNation is headquartered in Galway and operates a development centre in Brașov, Romania.
The company develops silicon and intellectual property focused on reducing unnecessary data processing before AI inference takes place. Its TriSense IP core combines neural image signal processing, sensor fusion and AI, while its TriSilica chip family integrates this architecture into silicon with high-capacity bonded memory.
FotoNation says its technology is already embedded in more than four billion products worldwide and has been used across dozens of tape-outs in consumer electronics and edge AI applications.
Top image: Photo by Vladislav Klapin on Unsplash
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