NXP Semiconductors has announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Kinara Inc., a contributor of high performance, energy-efficient and programmable discrete neural processing units (NPUs). These devices enable a wide range of edge AI applications, including multi-modal generative AI models. The acquisition will be an all-cash transaction valued at $307 million and is expected to close in the first half of 2025, subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory clearances.
The future of intelligent systems will require secure, cost-effective and energy efficient AI processing at the edge. As a result, the edge AI processing market is growing rapidly. Advanced AI at the edge enables critical decisions to be made locally and independently from the cloud, leading to faster responses, improved data privacy, and reduced costs.
Kinara’s NPUs and comprehensive software enablement deliver energy-efficient AI performance across a range of neural networks, including conventional AI, as well as generative AI, to address the rapidly growing AI needs of industrial and automotive markets. The acquisition will enhance and strengthen NXP’s ability to provide complete and scalable AI platforms, from TinyML to generative AI, by bringing discrete NPUs and robust AI software to NXP’s portfolio of processors, connectivity, security and advanced analogue solutions.
As existing partners, Kinara and NXP make it easy to pair Kinara’s NPUs with NXP’s portfolio of industrial and IoT processors. Together, the companies will create tighter integration of solutions to deliver scalable AI platforms for a variety of industrial and automotive AI inference needs.
“The industrial market is going through a transformation, with new innovations like generative AI helping to deliver major improvements in efficiency, sustainability, safety and predictability, and in many instances, unlock new use cases and functionality. Adding Kinara’s AI capabilities to our broad intelligent edge portfolio creates a scalable platform for new classes of AI-powered systems. Together, we can help our customers simplify complexity and accelerate time to market as they create transformative AI systems” said Rafael Sotomayor, the executive vice president and general manager of secure connected edge at NXP Semiconductors.
Advancing edge AI innovation with Kinara discrete NPUs
Kinara’s discrete NPUs, including the Ara-1 and Ara-2, are among the industry leaders in performance and power efficiency. This makes them the preferred solution for emerging AI applications in vision, voice, gesture and a variety of other generative AI-powered multi-modal implementations. Both devices feature an architecture that enables mapping of the inference graphs for efficient execution on Kinara’s programmable proprietary neural processing units for maximising edge AI performance. This programmability ensures adaptability as AI algorithms continue to evolve from CNNs to generative AI and new approaches such as agentic AI in the future.
Ara-1 is the first generation discrete NPU, capable of advanced AI inferencing at the edge. Ara-2, capable of up to 40 TOPS (Tera Operations Per Second), the second generation NPU, is optimised for achieving system-level high performance for generative AI. The Ara-1 and Ara-2 NPUs can be easily integrated with embedded systems to enhance their AI capabilities, including upgrading existing in-field systems.
Kinara also provides a complete software development kit enabling customers to optimise AI model performance and streamline the deployment. Kinara’s AI software portfolio includes extensive model libraries and model optimisation tools, which will be integrated into NXP’s eIQ AI/ML software development environment to enable customers to quickly and easily create end-to-end AI systems.
Embedded World 2025
The combined innovations of NXP and Kinara will be on display at Embedded World 2025 in Nuremberg. For more information, visit NXP.com/EmbeddedWorld or visit NXP’s Booth which will be #4A-222.
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