Mosaic SoC raises $3.8M to advance spatial intelligence

Mosaic SoC, a Swiss semiconductor startup which builds dedicated perception chips that bring spatial intelligence to energy-constrained devices, has announced a USD 3.8 million pre-seed round led by Founderful with participation from Kick Foundation.

Mosaic SoC builds integrated circuits that process visual and positional sensor data to give devices a real-time understanding of where they are and what’s around them, according to a media release. 

“Spatial intelligence shouldn’t require an application-class processor and a GPU,” said Alfio Di Mauro, CEO and co-founder of Mosaic SoC. “We built Mosaic SoC to deliver real-time perception at a fraction of the energy, so battery-powered devices can understand their environment without compromising form factor.”

The Mosaic SoC chips are designed to be small enough and efficient enough to make smart glasses indistinguishable from regular glasses, while still delivering full spatial awareness. The goal is to unlock device form factors that until now simply weren’t viable.

The chip lets a device build a local map of its surroundings and the objects within them, enabling features like recalling where an item was last seen or generating a floorplan on the fly. In smartphones, Mosaic SoC can act as a co-processor for the front camera, running always-on tracking and classification at a fraction of the power. That means a device can trigger recording only when a specific event occurs or a certain object appears, delivering continuous awareness without draining the battery, the media release said.

“The next billion smart devices will see and understand the world around them,” Antonia Albert, Investor at Founderful, said. “Mosaic SoC’s product is the chip that makes that possible at scale.”