Seattle is turning into the cradle of AI revolution. In a recent development, XNOR.ai, a computer-native AI startup has managed to scoop $2.6 million seed funding early this month from Madrona Venture Group. The Seattle-based AI startup intends to utilize the funds to expand its product innovation into MarTech domain, enabling mobile marketers to leverage the power of deep learning across devices. A spin-off from Paul Allen’s Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, XNOR.ai aims at making state-of-the-art AI capabilities cheaper in coming months.

“Our goal is to make all devices around us smarter,” said Ali Farhadi, CEO and co-founder of XNOR.ai. “Anywhere that requires running AI on the edge is where our technology becomes a key player. It enables new AI-powered apps on phones, handheld devices, wearable devices, AR, VR, drones, automotive, etc.”

“There is a big gap between the demands of AI algorithms — in terms of memory, computation, power — and what we can do on devices around us,” explained Farhadi. “For example, to tag an image with labels on your phone, you need to send the photo into GPU servers. They will process the image and get back to you with the tag. XNOR.ai’s technology empowers devices around us with the power of AI and enables running complex AI algorithms right on the device.”

XNOR.AI is, fundamentally, an ingenious computer-native algorithm that tunes AI models for vision and speech recognition, empowering devices to operate practically anywhere independently without relying on external servers and GPUs. This brings an unprecedented level of responsiveness and customer engagement on devices featuring XNOR.ai.

An interesting innovation at XNOR.ai is the $5 Raspberry PI ZERO computer, which is basically a computer chip running on artificial intelligence technology. Smaller than every smart device available today, this Raspberry from XNOR.ai can turn into AI product.

According to XNOR.ai, “Any device, which is a smart device, has endless possibilities.”

Cameras, wearables, sensors, watches and other smart devices – XNOR.AI will offer low-cost AI solutions to every commodity that runs on a computer chip. Despite the proliferation of intelligence technology into basic devices, they still can’t handle a magnanimous amount of data. XNOR.ai will bring ubiquity to smart devices, making AI technology the norm of every business. In short, XNOR.ai is set to democratize the AI fraternity, enabling different users to sell machine learning capabilities across open-source communities.

Most CMOs want AI and machine learning in their MarTech stack. However, the cost of innovation and integration remains a major hurdle. While there are obvious long-term cost benefits of using AI in MarTech, it’s the power of data privacy and data ownership that every CMO wants to adopt using machine intelligence. “No data needs to leave your device,” Farhadi says.

XNOR.ai’s seed funding is a big push for MarTech industry that has recently witnessed a windfall of AI innovations, penetrating into major marketing and sales stacks. As top Cloud and SaaS companies continue to acquire AI startups at will, XNOR.ai presents a fresh ground for native AI incubation within MarTech.