Article on EPD&T: Top Start-Up of 2025 - HaiLa Technologies
- sarah01268
- Oct 27
- 5 min read
Article on Electronic Product Design & Test (EPD&T): https://www.epdtonthenet.net/article/218420/Top-Start-Up-of-2025-HaiLa-Technologies.aspx
With the goal of removing the logistical complications and environmental impact problems that IoT infrastructure presents in terms of battery replacement/disposal, fab-less chip vendor HaiLa has developed game-changing backscatter technology where RF signals incident on IoT hardware are reflected back, but with valuable extra data added to the returning signals. This proves markedly more energy-efficient than other wireless communication arrangements and could open up some exciting new avenues.
Company name: HaiLa Technologies
Website: https://www.haila.io
Founded: 5 years ago.
Location: Montreal, Canada.
Industry: Wireless semiconductor products.
Technology: Ultra-low power semi design.
All the foundational knowledge behind it comes from in-depth research conducted at Stanford University. The early-stage company that was derived from this research then entering the TandemLaunch incubator (situated in Montreal). To date it has garnered approximately $19 million in financing, over $17.5 million of this being in equity and the rest coming from non-dilutive grants. Among its main investors so far are Murata Ventures, Chrysalix Venture Capital, Sustainable Development Technology Canada and Ecofuel Fund, with TandemLaunch also contributing.
“The original intent of the research done at Stanford was to support autonomous driving by making inanimate objects, such as road signs, traffic lights and fire hydrants, able to effectively ‘speak’ to passing vehicles. These items could potentially be obscured by vegetation, but would still need to interact with vehicles, so wireless transmission would have to be used, yet with nearly no power being consumed by these objects,” stated HaiLa’s CEO, Derek Kuhn, when interviewed by EPDT.
Through a passive backscattering process, it would be possible for signal that was picked up to then be reflected back, but with the addition of useful information. The initial studies were carried out using the dedicated short-range communication (DSRC) vehicular connectivity protocol. Since then the company has done extensive assessments in relation to many different wireless protocols - including Bluetooth, LoRa and cellular, with the focus mainly being on Wi-Fi, followed by Bluetooth being added more recently. It has engaged with GlobalFoundries, with the initial dies being fabricated on a 22nm silicon-on-insulator (SOI) semiconductor process. There are several reference designs already produced in conjunction with STMicroelectronics to help support development.
“I've worked on devices that had to be low power throughout my whole career,” Kuhn explained. “And overwhelmingly the radio has always taken the lion's share of the power. Our premise is that, if we can reduce that to something that’s pretty much negligible, then it’s going to undoubtedly be a real game-changer. Now, of course there's some amazing companies that are doing really low-power Wi-Fi chips out there, but they’re still operating in the mW region, whereas we're essentially working right down at single-digit µW levels.”
This is presenting countless new possibilities, not just the vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2X) communication use case that was originally explored. More widespread utilisation of energy harvesting is certainly going to be one of the major upshots - as the thresholds where this can be applied would now be made much smaller (requiring a smaller energy generating source). That will consequently mean deployed IoT infrastructure can operate for many years, possibly even decades, without the unwanted burden of having to put staff out in the field to replace batteries, as well as avoiding the ecological damage that comes with their disposal. Incident light, vibrations or thermal gradients may be leveraged instead. In this respect, HaiLa is collaborating with Belgian energy harvesting power management solutions company e-peas - seeing the BSC2000 Wi-Fi passive backscatter RF chip of the former working alongside the AEM10941 photovoltaic ambient energy management IC from the latter in high-profile demonstrations.
In other scenarios, battery cells could be more compact (so as to save space) or implemented for the whole life of a product (resulting in extra convenience). “It will be possible to use a battery that is a fraction of the size, enabling the devices they are used in to become much smaller and thereby accentuate their market appeal. Conversely, a normal sized battery could offer extended longevity,” he noted.
“To avoid the problems that come with US regulations concerning removable coin cell batteries, numerous companies are now looking at soldering in batteries, making them a lifetime purchase versus something that's replaceable,” Kuhn commented. The array of applications possibilities opened up by this are extensive. He envisages significant revenue streams for the company being generated with regard to building automation, wellbeing, medtech (smart patches), battery-free mobile accessories (capable of communicating with smartphone handsets), logistics, etc. “There’s even the prospect of consumers actually being able interrogate products to ensure their provenance - so they aren’t exposed to counterfeiting,” he said. “This will mean that they can check whether something is authentic or fake, determine where and when it was made, etc.”
Helping enable edge-located intelligence to be benefited from is another key prospect that is now starting to be explored. Cooperative work with Brain Chip is already underway. Together, the companies have shown how applications like anomaly detection and condition monitoring can be addressed by bringing together Brain Chip’s Akida event-based AI processor with HaiLa’s BSC2000 RF chip. “What we're starting to see is some of the sensing companies out there want to do intelligent manipulation of acquired data before sending it across the network, so as to keep duty cycles down, but they need to do it in battery-powered devices that run off very small energy storage reserves. By working together with Brain Chip, we can provide them with a combination of the radio and neural processing capabilities they are looking for, while keeping the system level power consumption in the hundreds of µW,” Kuhn stated.
“The fact that major industry bodies are starting to see the value of ambient power gives us real advocacy that we’re on the right track,” he continued. “The IEEE has begun development of an ambient powered standard, then there’s the low-power standard that 3GPP is working on. Also, the Bluetooth SIG has published on an ambient power path.”
In terms of product roadmap, HaiLa engineers are currently concentrating on the 3rd-generation BSC3000 series. This will comprise several different variants, with each featuring a RISC-V processor core as its basis, accompanied by Wi-Fi/Bluetooth connectivity and a full hardware cryptographic accelerator. Multiple sensor interfaces will also be included. There will be a stripped-down Bluetooth-only variant, plus a higher-end variant which has a neural processing unit (NPU) incorporated. “We've successfully assembled a team of engineers that are particularly focused on ultra-low power semiconductor design from a radio perspective. Though backscatter is going to be a big play for us, we're also doing extremely power-efficient traditional active transceiver components,” Kuhn concluded.
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