(Yicai Global) Oct. 24 -- Artificial intelligence chip startup DeePhi Technology Co. bagged about USD40 million in a series A+ round led by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. [NYSE:BABA] subsidiary Ant Financial Service Group and Samsung Electronics Co., 36Kr reported. China Merchants Finance Holdings Co. and China Growth Capital participated in the fundraising.

The firm will use a portion of the funds for product development and marketing in fields such as security and big data and to create terminal products and services for security monitoring, said DeePhi Technology founder and Chief Executive Yao Song.

The infusion of strategic resources from Ant Financial can help the company spread to more applications including those in finance, while the cooperation with Samsung will be more focused on aspects such as storage, Yao said.

Yao and two other graduates from Tsinghua University's Department of Electronic Engineering, Wang Yu and Han Song, established DeePhi Technology in March last year. Shan Yi, another Tsinghua alumnus, later joined the group as a partner.

DeePhi Technology provides deep learning acceleration and end-to-end solutions that use deep compression and a deep-learning processor unit platform. Leveraging the optimization of co-designed neutral networks and field-programmable gate arrays, the company offers efficient and economical inference platforms for embedded and cloud network terminals in security and data centers.