BrainChip Boasts of a Strong Ecosystem for Its Akida Edge AI Box
A post-pre-order price hike to $1,495, though, puts a damper on its claims of cost efficiency for direct deployment.
Neuromorphic edge artificial intelligence (AI) specialist BrainChip is celebrating a year since it unveiled its Akida Edge AI Box development platform at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas — and it's back in Sin City again this year to announce "an all-star lineup" of partners on the project.
"The Akida Edge Box is a great platform for running AI in standalone edge environments where footprint, cost and efficiency is critical, while not compromising performance," claims BrainChip chief executive officer Sean Hehir. "We look forward to announcing more partners developing edge AI for their customers' specific use cases and more importantly, we look forward to the ideas these companies will bring to life with the Akida Edge AI Box."
BrainChip opened orders for the Akida Edge Box, developed in partnership with VVDN, back in February last year, after showcasing the device at CES 2024. The idea: delivering a low-cost single-unit development platform for those looking to experiment with the company's Akida neuromorphic processor, with two AKD1000 chips installed in the compact device alongside an NXP Semiconductors i.MX 8M Plus system-on-chip.
While there's no new Akida Edge Box for CES 2025, BrainChip still has plenty to announce in the form of partnership on the project. The Akida Edge AI Box ecosystem now includes, the company says: support in Edge Impulse for rapid AI model development, training, and deployment; gesture recognition support from BeEmotion; climate forecasting developed by AI Labs; model evaluation from DeGirum; cybersecurity projects from Quantum Ventura; and computer vision analysis from Vedya Labs.
BrainChip is also repositioning the Akida Edge AI Box, which is priced below its previous development kits: "the Akida Edge AI Box is so cost-effective," the company claims, "it can be utilized in production applications: in every patient's room to monitor their health and safety; in every store aisle to gauge shopping experience; in every car, truck, boat, or plane in the fleet to manage logistics."
The device isn't quite as affordable as it used to be, though: pre-orders for the Akida Edge Box launched in February 2024 at just $799, but the company is currently asking for $1,495 on its official web store — with a 10-12 week shipping estimate.