Mihai Raneti secured backing from Tim Draper. It took roughly sixteen thousand emails to one thousand two hundred and fourteen investors across eight years. Draper was number one thousand two hundred and fourteen.
There were failed companies before this one, among them CyberFog, which built proactive security that worked by deceiving attackers. That line of work is where the processor came from.
CyberSwarm is building a new kind of processor modelled on how biological neurons behave, an artificial neural synapse aimed at connected devices, the computers in autonomous vehicles, and industrial robots.
Eighty percent of the funding goes into research and twenty percent into operations. Six patents have been filed in the United States, with at least ten more planned for the following year.
“Failure does not scare me,” Raneti says. “It motivates me, and I am not embarrassed to acknowledge my mistakes.” On building a company, his position is that none can exceed the capacity of its founders, which is why investing in the team is critical.
He learned to program in an internet cafe in the early 2000s, alongside an interest in cybersecurity, quantum physics, astrophysics, mathematics and history. Draper is known for backing Tesla, Skype, Twitter, SpaceX and bitcoin.