SAN FRANCISCO, CA — DECEMBER 14, 2023 — Vellex Computing has completed the National Science Foundation's I-Corps program, administered through the I-Corps Mid-South Hub. Over two months, the Vellex team conducted 125 customer discovery interviews with industry leaders across energy infrastructure, manufacturing, and electric vehicles to assess commercial demand for on-device AI and real-time edge intelligence.
The program pairs entrepreneurial teams with experienced mentors and gives them structured access to potential customers across industries. Vellex used the experience to validate the core need for always-on AI at the edge — applications where latency, power constraints, and connectivity limitations make cloud-based AI impractical. Its physics-based analog architecture addresses that gap directly, delivering on-device AI and real-time optimization orders of magnitude faster and at a fraction of the energy cost of conventional digital approaches.
Customer interviews revealed consistent demand across sectors for embedded intelligence that can operate without cloud dependency. In energy infrastructure, rapid power flow optimization and real-time grid management create clear pull. In electric vehicles and industrial systems, the growing volume of onboard sensor data and the need for real-time control are pushing hardware requirements beyond what conventional chips can deliver at acceptable power budgets. These findings reinforced Vellex's focus on analog computing as a foundation for edge AI across energy, industrial IoT, and autonomous hardware applications, and informed the company's subsequent SBIR grant strategy.
About Vellex Computing Vellex Computing is a Stanford-spinout analog semiconductor company developing ultra-low-power chips for AI training. Powered by a decade of research and backed by the U.S. National Science Foundation and Department of Energy, Vellex's technology delivers AI training at a fraction of the energy cost of GPU-based solutions. Vellex is headquartered in San Francisco, CA.
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About NSF I-Corps
In 2011, the U.S. National Science Foundation Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program was launched to support NSF's mission through experiential learning using the customer discovery process, allowing teams to quickly assess their inventions' market potential. I-Corps prepares scientists and engineers to extend their focus beyond the laboratory to increase the economic and societal impact of NSF-funded and other basic research projects. Learn more at nsf.gov.
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