(Yicai Global) March 26 -- Moffett AI secured CNY100 million (USD15.3 million) in new financing today as the Chinese artificial intelligence chipmaker comes closer to offering a domestic accelerator card that could challenge US’ Nvidia’s monopoly on the market.

Participants in the pre-A-round fundraising included investment fund Jiangmen Venture Capital as well as China-focused venture capital firms ZhenFund, Keytone Ventures and Creation Venture Partners, the company said. The funds raised will be used for product development and marketing, Chief Executive Officer Wang Wei said.

Shenzhen-based Moffett AI’s Antom chips, which should be available in China before the end of the year, use AI algorithm sparsity, which allows neural network models to cut redundancy and repetition, reduce computing pressure and improve performance.

What we are looking for is not just a domestic substitute, but a breakthrough technology that can catch up with and surpass California-based Nvidia in power consumption, performance and price, said Joe Zhou, co-founder and managing partner at KeyTone Ventures. The real breakthrough is at the algorithm level, he added.

The main buyers of Antom chips will be cloud service providers, online video websites and e-commerce platforms.

Editor: Kim Taylor