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FotoNation Completes a Pre-A Round to fund the development of its TriSilica chip lead by Enterprise Ireland and Silicon Gardens

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GALWAY, Ireland, May 7, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — FotoNation® LTD., a Galway-based company, announced it has closed its Pre-A round led by Enterprise-Ireland and Silicon Gardens, with participation from other notable Angels.

This capital will accelerate FotoNation’s mission to develop its TriSilica® product: an ultra-low-power, perception-AI chip. Specifically, the funds will be used to progress the completion of the MPW prototype, TS-210.

” This investment, from a leading European VC as well as from the Irish Government, marks a pivotal moment for our company. On behalf of the management team, I thank our investors for their shared conviction in our long-term potential, cementing FotoNation as a leader in the European AI hardware race”, said Petronel Bigioi, CEO, FotoNation.

Since its Q3/2024 reincarnation, FotoNation, with many of its original team members, engaged in numerous design wins and reclaimed its market position as a leader in optimized ultra-low power perceptual-AI solutions. Investor support validates market demand for a dedicated hardware sensor-processing chipset.

“FotoNation is building ultra-efficient, hardware-accelerated edge AI that fuses vision and multimodal sensing on device,” said Gregor Rebolj, Managing Partner, Silicon Gardens. “Their technical depth and focus on privacy-aware experiences position them to help define the post-smartphone era of AI companions, from Physical AI to perceptual intelligence.”

Enterprise Ireland, the Irish government’s enterprise development agency, co-led the round, further cementing FotoNation’s commitment to the West of Ireland.

Leo McAdams, Head of Advanced Manufacturing and Lifesciences at Enterprise Ireland said, “Enterprise Ireland is proud to support FotoNation’s next phase of growth, reinforcing Ireland’s advanced technology and semiconductor ecosystem. This investment underscores our commitment to helping ambitious Irish companies scale globally, create high–value jobs across all regions, and build long–term economic resilience. We look forward to working closely with FotoNation as it seeks to expand internationally.”

About FotoNation:
FotoNation Ltd. is an Irish AI  company headquartered in Galway, with a development center in Brașov, Romania. FotoNation designs silicon and IP built around a single conviction: eliminate unnecessary data before inference begins.
Its TriSense™ IP core brings together neural ISP, sensor fusion, and  AI for perceptual cognition under extreme power constraints. Its TriSilica® chip family adds industry-first high-capacity bonded memory, translating that architecture into production silicon for devices that perceive, adapt, and act. FotoNation’s technology is embedded in more than 4 billion products worldwide, contributing to dozens of top-tier tape-outs across the consumer and edge AI markets. For more information, please visit: www.fotonation.com.

About Enterprise Ireland:
Enterprise Ireland is the Irish Government agency that works with Irish enterprises to help them start, compete, scale and connect and win export sales in global markets. Enterprise Ireland partners with entrepreneurs, Irish businesses, and the research and investment communities to develop Ireland’s international trade, innovation, and competitiveness. In this way, we support sustainable economic growth and regional development and help create and sustain employment in Ireland.
www.enterprise-ireland.com

About Silicon Gardens: 
Silicon Gardens is a venture capital firm, run by entrepreneurs who have built and scaled their own companies. They are  dedicated to backing the next generation of high-growth innovative technology businesses. Silicon Gardens partner closely with founders to help them build durable, category-defining companies.
https://www.silicongardens.com/

Media Contact:
info@fotonaiton.com
www.fotonation.com

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NEC Vietnam Appoints New General Director to Advance Digital Innovation

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HANOI, Vietnam, May 18, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — NEC Vietnam announced the appointment of Yasushi Numakura as its new General Director, effective April 1, 2026. The appointment reflects NEC’s continued commitment to expanding trusted technology partnerships and supporting Vietnam’s growing digital ambitions.

Numakura-san joined NEC Group in 1990 and brings over three decades of experience across systems engineering, mobile technology development, and global business leadership. In 2014, he was appointed Head of NEC Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh branch, where he drove business portfolio transformation and strengthened regional partnerships. He subsequently held leadership roles at NEC Solution Innovators and most recently led resource management reform initiatives as part of delivery model transformation efforts.

In his new role, he will lead NEC Vietnam’s business operations and strategic direction, with a focus on strengthening software development capabilities and accelerating digital transformation initiatives across key sectors, serving both the Japanese and APAC markets.

“I am excited to join NEC Vietnam and build on the strong momentum established by the local team over the years. Together with our customers and partners, we look forward to creating what’s ahead through trusted technologies and meaningful solutions that create lasting value for businesses, communities, and society. In line with NEC’s 2030 mid-term direction, we will also advance our capabilities as an AI-native organization with security at the core, ensuring that our innovations are both impactful and resilient,” shares Numakura-san.

Under his leadership, NEC Vietnam will continue providing technologies and solutions spanning software development, biometrics, and public safety.

***

About NEC Vietnam

NEC established its liaison office in Vietnam in the early 1990s under the global business framework of NEC Corporation. It was re-organized as NEC Vietnam Co., Ltd. in 2006, with a newfound commitment to grow the business and contribute towards the people and society of Vietnam.

In a rapidly changing business environment, NEC Vietnam has evolved into a comprehensive solutions provider, leveraging their core competence in delivering Solutions for Society, focused on building social infrastructure that benefits citizens and communities.

Visit https://vn.nec.com to learn more.

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SOURCE NEC Vietnam

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South Asia’s First-ever Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) Demonstration, Led by ISGF in Collaboration with its Technology and Utility Partners

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NEW DELHI, May 19, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — South Asia’s first ever groundbreaking Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) Technology Demonstration in India implemented by India Smart Grid Forum (ISGF) marks a major advancement in smart Electric Vehicle (EV) charging and grid stability, paving the way for a future of bidirectional energy flows between EVs and the power grid. ISGF, with its utility partners and technical support from the University of Delaware (UDEL), USA, executed this first-of-its-kind Alternating Current (AC) V2G pilot demonstration in South Asia. The demonstration project was implemented at BSES Rajdhani Power Limited, BSES Yamuna Power Limited, TATA Power Delhi Distribution Limited, as well as at the Agency for New and Renewable Energy Research and Technology (ANERT), Kerala. This pilot demonstration has tested a variety of V2G use cases and found it highly relevant for distributed renewable energy integration and grid stability.

As part of the project, four Tata Nexon EVs were retrofitted with on-board bidirectional power modules and connected to the grid through bidirectional AC chargers. The equipment cost of AC V2G is significantly lower than DC V2G. ISGF is working with local technology companies and EV OEMs to build a V2G ecosystem in the country.

For more information, please write to contactus@indiasmartgrid.org

About India Smart Grid Forum (ISGF)

ISGF is a public private partnership initiative of the Govt. of India, with the mandate of accelerating smart grid deployments across the country. With 170+ members comprising of ministries, utilities, technology providers, academia and research, ISGF has evolved as a Think-Tank of global repute on Smart Energy and Smart Cities. The mandate of ISGF is to accelerate energy transition through clean energy, electric grid modernization and electric mobility; work with national and international agencies in standards development and help utilities, regulators and the Industry in technology selection, training and capacity building.

Website: https://indiasmartgrid.org/ 

Photo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2981114/ISGF_V2G_demo_South_Asia.jpg
Logo: https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/2845462/5972830/ISGF_Logo.jpg

 

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Tencent Cloud and Stream Partner to Accelerate the Development of Real-Time Multimodal AI Agents

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HONG KONG, May 19, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Tencent Cloud, the cloud business of leading global technology company, Tencent, today announced a strategic collaboration with Stream, the company behind the open-source AI agent framework Vision Agents, to accelerate the development of real-time, multimodal AI agents.

Through this collaboration, Tencent Real-Time Communication (Tencent RTC) becomes an officially supported edge transport plugin for Vision Agents, giving developers worldwide a low-latency path to build and deploy interactive AI applications across global markets, including regions where network complexity and real-time performance are critical.

Unlocking Lower-Latency Transport for Enhanced Experiences Across China and Asia

Vision Agents is an open-source, edge-agnostic Python framework from Stream that helps developers quickly build low-latency vision AI applications. Rather than retrofitting video onto a voice-centric stack, Vision Agents was designed as a video-first solution — running models such as YOLO, Roboflow, OpenAI Realtime, and Google Gemini on every frame, with sub-500ms end-to-end latency and over 25 out-of-the-box integrations across LLM, STT, TTS, vision, RAG, telephony, and avatar providers.

Through this partnership, Tencent RTC becomes an officially supported edge transport plugin for Vision Agents. Developers can use Tencent RTC to replace the default communication layer in Vision Agents and instantly leverage Tencent Cloud’s enterprise-grade backbone — more than 3,200 global nodes, sub-300ms worldwide latency, AI-driven noise suppression, and weak-network resilience — while keeping every existing LLM, STT, TTS, vision, and avatar plugin unchanged.

The integration supports both audio and video, making it suitable for voice agents, video agents, and multimodal scenarios — powering use cases such as gaming assistants, virtual avatars, sports coaching, and robotics. AI agents can join TRTC rooms and interact with participants in real-time through high-quality audio and video streams.

Tencent RTC operates a globally distributed real-time network with particularly strong performance across some markets in Asia where many global real-time stacks face connectivity and latency challenges. By integrating Tencent RTC, Vision Agents gives developers worldwide a reliable transport option for delivering low-latency, multimodal AI experiences to users in Asia. Developers can improve real-time communication performance by simply swapping the interface.

Wison Xie, Head of Product at Tencent RTC, said: “Vision Agents represents exactly where conversational AI is heading, beyond voice-only, into agents that can truly see, hear, and act in real time. By bringing Tencent RTC’s global real-time backbone to the Vision Agents framework, we are giving developers worldwide a turnkey path to ship multimodal agents that perform reliably from Silicon Valley to Shenzhen. This collaboration reinforces our commitment to powering the next generation of real-time AI experiences for enterprises and developers across global market.”

Neevash Ramdial, Director of Marketing and Vision Agents Lead, said, “Our goal with Vision Agents is to make real-time AI development faster, more flexible, and open, giving developers the freedom to choose the models, infrastructure, and plugins that work best for their applications. Developers building global conversational AI applications also need reliable real-time performance in every market, and Tencent RTC brings high-quality, low-latency connectivity across Asia to the Vision Agents ecosystem. We’re excited to work with Tencent RTC to help developers scale multimodal AI experiences worldwide while having the freedom to use whichever plugin or model best fits their app.”

About Tencent Cloud:
Tencent Cloud, one of the world’s leading cloud companies, is committed to creating innovative solutions to resolve real-world issues and enabling digital transformation for smart industries. Through our extensive global infrastructure, Tencent Cloud provides businesses across the globe with stable and secure industry-leading cloud products and services, leveraging technological advancements such as cloud computing, Big Data analytics, AI, IoT, and network security. It is our constant mission to meet the needs of industries across the board, including the fields of gaming, media and entertainment, finance, healthcare, property, retail, travel, and transportation.

About Tencent RTC: 
Tencent RTC provides real-time communication solutions, including audio/video calling, live streaming, and in-game voice. With enterprise-grade security, AI-powered enhancements, and a global network of over 3,200 nodes, Tencent RTC powers mission-critical communication for customers worldwide.

About Vision Agents: 
Vision Agents is Stream’s open-source framework that helps developers quickly build real-time video AI applications. It works out of the box with most major LLM, speech-to-text, text-to-speech, avatar, and infrastructure providers, so teams can go from idea to production in just a few lines of code, building everything from real-time sports coaches to rich, context-aware avatars.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/tencent-cloud-and-stream-partner-to-accelerate-the-development-of-real-time-multimodal-ai-agents-302774565.html

SOURCE Tencent Cloud

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