Kandou Bus: Power the digital revolution at chip level
25.01.2017
The growing digitalization of our society has made our lives connected and, in many aspects, easier. However, the digital revolution also implies that the total amount of data processed in the world is doubling every two years or so. Electronic devices such as mobile phones, laptops, satellites, servers or self-driving vehicles have to cope with twice as much data, at more speed. As such, the electronics industry has not yet taken the path to overcome the situation, and it might need a little push from innovative minds to enter the digital era.
 Kandou Bus will open a new office in Silicon Valley and double its team to meet customers demand.
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The 2011 Venture Kick winner Kandou Bus could be the right player for the industry: its pioneering ”Glasswing“ technology provides a disruptive push to chips, an essential hardware component to process data. In particular, Kandou enhances the communication (or signaling) between chips, to help them cope with larger amounts of data, in a quicker way, and with less energy. The key lies in a simpler design of chips compared to the industry standards. Glasswing can increase the chip’s yield by five (today, only 10 % of the produced high-end chips are usable), reduce the design process and the time to market, and help manufacture cheaper and smaller chips.”Our technology can help the industry save USD 1 to 2 billion per year, compared to today’s standardized, monolithic systems“, explains Amin Shokrollahi, Kandou’s founder and CEO. The company already counts a big player in the semiconductors industry, Marvell, as a customer. When needed, Kandou can also work on tailored designs for its clients. If things go well, Kandoucould well become a leader in a world market worth USD 300 billion per year.
Identify the future direction of the industry
In five years, Kandou was able to gain huge credibility in the electronics industry. Now the demand is actually higher than what the team of 23 can handle. “Our strategy since the beginning has been to identify the direction in which the industry is going, file patents, then license our solutions”, explains Amin Shokrollahi. In total, Kandou filed an impressive number of patents (170 in 65 different families, out of which more than 60 are already issued). Kandou could also prove its research-based findings by presenting papers at renowned conferences, such as DesignCon and ISSCC, where it won Best Paper Awards in 2015 and in 2016.
In July 2016, Kandou completed a USD 15 million investment round to expand research and accelerate its development. This will help Amin Shokrollahi and his team to start a Silicon Valley office in 2017, and grow its R&D sites in the UK and in Switzerland. The team will also double and a new ”seasoned CEO“ will be appointed in the US. In the long term, Kandou’s goal is to become a product company. There, it can hope to see its revenues grow to tens of billions US dollars per year, compared to 500 million a year in the IP business.