Feb 13 (Reuters) - Startup EnCharge AI raised more than

$100 million in a Series B funding round led by Tiger Global to

bring more efficient and less expensive AI chips to the market,

the company said on Thursday.

The company did not disclose details on valuation.

EnCharge AI develops analog chips that are integrated into

semiconductors used for storage. These in-memory chips are

designed for inference, a phase where AI models are utilized

rather than trained.

While most AI inference chips are typically housed in vast

server clusters within data centers, EnCharge AI's chips are

designed for edge computing, being utilized in user-facing

devices like laptops.

Their approach to embedding analog processing in memory

chips allows their accelerators to perform AI tasks with up to

20 times less energy consumption compared to some of the leading

AI chips, the company said.

Battery-powered devices like laptops and smartphones need

efficient chips to process AI and analog chips situated inside

semiconductors for memory are a viable solution, CEO Naveen

Verma told Reuters.

"It turns out that these platforms can now really overcome

many of the barriers in terms of cost and sustainability, but

also in terms of privacy and security, which the enterprise and

also a lot of consumer applications care very much about."

Groq, founded by a former Alphabet chip engineer

and Cerebras, are among the companies developing specialized

chips for AI inference.

Other investors in the round included Samsung Electronics' ( SSNLF )

VC arm and HH-CTBC, a partnership between Taiwan's

Foxconn and CTBC Venture Capital.