Cambridge Innovation Capital (CIC) has led a $10 million Series B funding in SWIM.AI, a San Jose-based edge computing company that is opening a research centre in Cambridge UK to take advantage of local the local technology talent pool.

Cambridge’s greatest ever tech business, superchip architect Arm, also participated in the round along with existing investors.

SWIM.AI provides edge intelligence software, which combines local data processing with analytics and machine learning to deliver real-time business insights.

The new funding will be used by SWIM.AI to launch a Cambridge-based AI R & D centre, capitalising on the expertise available in the Cambridge cluster, to accelerate product development, and expand sales and marketing into new verticals and geographies.

Edge computing is an emerging technology for processing data on sensors and control devices in a network closest to where that data is generated. 

Processing data at the edge, where it is captured, rather than transmitting that data to the cloud, reduces latency and bandwidth, and reduces cloud storage and computing costs.

Andrew Williamson of CIC said: “SWIM.AI has created an industry leading solution that will change the way manufacturers, service providers, enterprises, cities, IoT vendors and others consume and utilise data at the edge.

“The SWIM team is helping customers overcome edge data processing challenges and efficiently build edge processing applications. We are delighted to support Rusty, Chris and the team at SWIM.AI.”

In April, SWIM.AI announced the general availability of its edge software solution SWIM EDXTM, which enables customers to analyse high volumes of streaming edge data and deliver real-time insights that can easily be shared and visualised. 

SWIM EDX greatly reduces bandwidth, storage and cloud processing costs for large volumes of edge data. In addition, a developer software development kit (or SDK) makes it simple to create new real-time edge applications
SWIM.AI already has a number of customers who are using the EDX software to deliver edge intelligence to manufacturing, smart city, IoT, logistics and many other verticals.

“SWIM’s ability to analyse data and apply machine learning at the edge unlocks new IoT use cases by unleashing data that was previously too difficult, slow or expensive to send to the cloud for analysis,” said Damon Civin, Principal Data Scientist at Arm.

“Their solution complements the Arm Mbed IoT Device Management Platform and our mission of enabling organisations to seamlessly obtain and derive meaning from their IoT data.”

Rusty Cumpston, co-founder and CEO of SWIM.AI, added, “Demand for the EDX software is rapidly increasing, driven by our software’s unique ability to analyse and reduce data, share new insights instantly peer-to-peer locally at the ‘edge’ on existing equipment. 

“Efficiently processing edge data and enabling insights to be easily created and delivered with the lowest latency are critical needs for any organisation. We are excited to expand SWIM’s operations in Cambridge, and look forward to partnering with our new investors to shape the future of real-time analytics at the edge.”

Chris Sachs, co-founder and chief architect of SWIM.AI, said SWIM EDX is lightweight software that can be added to existing edge devices, creating a “powerful compute fabric for real-time data analysis, reduction, learning on any edge.”

• PHOTOGRAPH SHOWS: Andrew Williamson