Foghorn Systems is a startup based in Sunyvale, CA that develops edge intelligence solutions for IoT applications deployed in industrial or commercial settings. Founded in 2014, Foghorn has raised over $70 million in funding and was recognized as a leading company in Edge AI innovation. Recently Foghorn announced that they would be providing solutions to Aramco, a Saudi Arabian based oil company with over $200 billion in revenue in 2020. Foghorn has only been active in the edge computing sector within the past five years, but have already built a portfolio of ten patent assets. While small relative to the technology giants in the space, Foghorn benefits from a more specialized area of edge computing with little competition, similar to Rockwell Automation.
With high praise from the industry and a very large company buying their solutions, Foghorn has strong momentum on their side and will likely keep investing in expanding their patent portfolio to retain their competitive advantage. One interesting wrinkle could come from Relyance AI, a machine learning and data privacy company co-founded by one of the founding members of Foghorn, Abhi Sharma. Relyance’s other co-founder is attorney and data protection expert, Leila Golchehreh. Relyance is currently operating in stealth mode and has not filed for any patents that are published within edge computing, but they have a stated purpose of redefining data protection for organizations through automation and machine learning. It will be worth watching if Relyance joins the sector soon with their own patents and if they try to compete with Foghorn in the industrial market.
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