Mythic

Founded in 2012 by Mike Henry and Dave Fick on an unusual bet: rather than shuttling weights between memory and processor, store them as charge in flash cells and let the multiplication happen as analog current right inside the memory array. That sidesteps the von Neumann bottleneck that makes inference so power-hungry. Its M1076 Analog Matrix Processor aimed at cameras and drones.

The company nearly ran out of cash in late 2022 and laid off most of its staff, only to be rescued by fresh funding and new management the next year. A reminder that analog compute is as alluring as it is hard to ship: precision drifts with temperature and wear in ways digital circuits simply don't.