XMOS is a fabless semiconductor company that develops audio products and multicore microcontrollers. The company uses artificial intelligence and other sensors in the platforms that it develops. It creates voice interface technology developments for applications in various services that are voice activated.

History

XMOS was founded in July 2005 by Ali Dixon, James Foster, Noel Hurley, David May, and Hitesh Mehta. It received seed funding from the University of Bristol enterprise fund, and Wyvern seed fund.

The name XMOS is a loose reference to Inmos. Some concepts found in XMOS technology (such as channels and threads) are part of the Transputer legacy.

In the autumn of 2006, XMOS secured funding from Amadeus Capital Partners, DFJ Esprit, and Foundation Capital. It also has strategic investors Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH, Huawei Technologies, and Xilinx Inc, which in 2014 invested $26.2 million. Additionally, they received an investment through the sale of 22.3% of the Company's shares to Prelude Trust plc of Cambridge. In September 2017, XMOS secured $15M in an investment round led by Infineon.

In July 2017, XMOS acquired SETEM, a company that specialises in audio algorithms for source separation.

In 2019, XMOS raised $19 million in funding from Harbert European Growth Capital and existing investors.

In December 2023, XMOS signed a joint development agreement with Sonical for Headphone 3.0 technology.

Products

Xmos designs multicore microcontrollers under the xCORE series. While the second generation launched in 2015, had dedicated audiocontroller spun off and were used in soundboards as well as headphone amplifiers, the third generation was launched in 2020 and focused on applications within the AIoT. The fourth generation added RISC-V compatibility and was announced in December 2022.