Altair Semiconductor, the Israeli-founded chipmaker, is spinning back out of Sony after a decade under its ownership, though the Japanese electronics giant will retain a stake. The move coincides with a $50 million funding round led by Pitango Group, aimed at strengthening Altair’s IoT connectivity portfolio and advancing its shift toward 5G and what it calls “physical AI.”
Sony originally acquired Altair in 2016 for $212 million to boost its Internet of Things capabilities, leveraging Altair’s low-power, single-mode LTE chipsets. Under the new arrangement, Altair regains operational independence while Sony remains a minority shareholder, a structure intended to give the company greater agility as it targets next-generation cellular IoT. The fresh capital will be used to scale its cellular IoT silicon and software, particularly for massive machine-type communications (mMTC) and ultra-reliable low-latency use cases required by 5G standards. Altair also plans to integrate AI processing into its edge devices, enabling on-device inference for industrial, automotive, and smart-city applications—what it terms “physical AI,” where AI models interact directly with the physical world through sensors and actuators.
Pitango Group, a prominent Israeli venture capital firm, led the round, signaling confidence in Altair’s direction and the broader market for 5G-powered edge intelligence. The company has historically served module makers and OEMs with chipsets that balance performance and energy efficiency, and the increased investment suggests it intends to compete more aggressively as cellular connectivity becomes ubiquitous in industrial IoT and autonomous systems. The injection of funds and renewed independence position Altair to capture growth in 5G-based IoT, a market projected to reach tens of billions of connections over the coming years.