Hailo
Hailo designs edge AI processors and a matching software suite, letting cameras, robots, vehicles and PCs run computer vision and generative AI models locally at very low power, without sending inference data to any cloud service.
What is Hailo?
Hailo Technologies Ltd. is an Israeli semiconductor company, founded in 2017, that builds AI processors for the edge together with the software needed to program them. Instead of shipping data to a data centre, its chips run deep learning inference directly inside the device.
The hardware comes in two families. The AI accelerators are co-processors that plug into an existing host: the entry-level Hailo-8L reaches 13 TOPS, the Hailo-8 delivers 26 TOPS, and the Hailo-8 Century PCIe card scales to 208 TOPS. The newer Hailo-10H targets generative AI with 40 TOPS of INT4 performance; Hailo states it runs Llama2-7B at roughly ten tokens per second and renders a Stable Diffusion 2.1 image in under five seconds, both inside a five-watt envelope. The AI vision processors, Hailo-15L and Hailo-15H, are camera system-on-chips pairing an AI image signal processor with video analytics, GenAI-powered smart search and event triggering. Parts ship as bare silicon, M.2 modules, mPCIe modules or PCIe cards.
The Hailo AI Software Suite is shared across the whole range. The Dataflow Compiler translates models from TensorFlow or ONNX, quantises them, allocates resources against FPS, latency and power targets, then compiles a device binary; a bit-exact emulator and a profiler support debugging. HailoRT executes the result, either on the Hailo-15 itself or on an x86 or ARM host running Linux, Windows or Android. It exposes C/C++ and Python APIs, a command-line tool, a REST API compatible with Ollama and OpenAI, a GStreamer hailonet plugin, ONNX Runtime support and a Yocto layer, and one host can drive up to sixteen accelerators. HailoRT itself is published as open source on GitHub. The Model Zoo supplies pre-trained vision and generative models, and a public Model Explorer compares them by device, task, throughput and accuracy.
Hailo claims more than 300 customers, keeps offices in seven countries and lists a wide hardware partner ecosystem. Documented applications span video security, ADAS and autonomous driving, industrial optical inspection, smart retail, robotics and drones, and on-device generative AI for personal computers.
What it does
- Run computer vision models — detection, segmentation, re-identification, OCR — in real time on the device
- Run LLMs and generative AI models locally, up to 40 TOPS of INT4 on the Hailo-10H
- Compile and quantise your own models for Hailo silicon with the Dataflow Compiler
- Deploy inference through HailoRT on an x86 or ARM host under Linux, Windows or Android
- Drive inference from C/C++, Python, a CLI, or a REST API compatible with Ollama and OpenAI
- Build video pipelines with the GStreamer hailonet plugin and process several streams at once
- Compare Model Zoo models by device, task, throughput and accuracy in the Model Explorer
When to use Hailo / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Hailo is the right fit.
When to use Hailo
- Embedded and hardware engineers designing a product that must run computer vision or LLMs on the device itself
- Teams whose latency, bandwidth or privacy constraints rule out a cloud inference service
- Camera and video-security manufacturers needing image quality and analytics from a single system-on-chip
- Automotive and robotics engineers working on ADAS, autonomous driving, drones or autonomous machines
- Industrial automation teams doing optical inspection, anomaly detection, sorting or OCR on the production line
When not to use Hailo
- Anyone expecting a cloud service or a hosted API: this is hardware you must buy and integrate
- Buyers who need a published price, since no figure appears anywhere on the site
- Developers who want to read the documentation before committing, as downloads and docs require a Developer Zone account
- Consumers looking for a mobile or desktop application, which Hailo does not offer
- Organisations in the countries and regions named in Hailo's export restrictions
How to use Hailo
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Pick the right part for your application from the Products pages or the Model Explorer filters
- Contact Hailo through the Product Inquiry form, or order from a regional distributor such as EBV/Avnet, Farnell, AIT or Insem
- Request a Developer Zone account, which is required for software downloads and documentation
- Train your model, or take a pre-trained one from the Model Zoo in TensorFlow or ONNX format
- Compile and quantise it with the Dataflow Compiler, letting it allocate resources against your FPS, latency and power targets
- Check behaviour with the bit-exact emulator and estimate throughput with the profiler
- Deploy the binary with HailoRT, on the Hailo-15 itself or on your x86 or ARM host
- Wire it into your application through the C/C++ or Python API, the CLI, the REST endpoint or the GStreamer plugin
- Use the Yocto layer to fold HailoRT, pyHailoRT and the PCIe and NN Core drivers into an embedded build
- Lean on the Example Applications, the Hailo GitHub repositories and the public community while prototyping
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Strong performance-per-watt claims, including generative AI under five watts on the Hailo-10H
- One software suite covers the whole range, so moving between Hailo-8, 10H and 15 does not mean relearning the toolchain
- Open-source HailoRT runtime on GitHub, with standard interfaces: C/C++, Python, CLI, REST, GStreamer and ONNX Runtime
- REST API compatible with Ollama and OpenAI, which lets existing code be reused with little change
- Four ISO conformities claimed, including ISO 27001:2022 for information security
- Inference stays on the device, so no customer data transits through a Hailo cloud
- Dense hardware partner ecosystem and distributors across every major region
Cons
- No price is published anywhere on the site; the Shop page only lists distributors
- Documentation, software downloads and the customer support page all require a Developer Zone account
- No Data Processing Agreement is published and no GDPR Article 27 representative is named, despite an EU headquarters in Munich
- The site never claims GDPR compliance explicitly, leaving its regulatory posture ambiguous
- The seven office email links on the Contact page are empty, so only two addresses are genuinely reachable
- Named export restrictions block several countries and regions
- Warranty is one year from shipment, and evaluation boards and engineering samples are supplied as-is with no warranty at all
Pricing & Plans
Hailo publishes no pricing. No amount appears on any page of the site, and the Shop page is a directory of regional distributors rather than a price list, so there is no lowest advertised price point and no currency to quote. Commercial access runs through the Product Inquiry form or through resellers such as EBV/Avnet, Farnell, AIT and Insem, where any actual figures would be found. There is no free plan and no free trial: registering for the Developer Zone is free of charge but is an access condition, not a commercial offer. Products are sold EXW under Incoterms 2020, with freight and handling charged separately.
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Hailo handles your data.
GDPR overview
Implementation is partial and understated. The GDPR is mentioned once, only to distinguish the roles of data controller and data processor, alongside the CCPA; Hailo never states in so many words that it is GDPR compliant, nor that it is not. In practice the privacy policy, last dated April 2024, offers access, rectification, deletion and portability rights, exercised by writing to privacy@hailo.ai. International transfers rely on the EU Standard Contractual Clauses or on jurisdictions the European Commission has found adequate. Three things are missing: no Data Processing Agreement is published or offered, no Article 27 EU representative is designated even though the company declares a Munich EU headquarters, and no data protection officer is named.
Who owns the data?
Hailo splits the roles explicitly. For website visitors and job candidates it acts as data controller and takes on the matching responsibilities. For the personal data of Customer End-Users it acts only as a data processor, handling that data on behalf of the business customer and under that customer's instructions; end-user rights requests must therefore go to the customer, not to Hailo. On the product side the sale terms are equally clear: the seller keeps title and all intellectual property rights in the hardware, its designs, masks, schematics and embedded software, and no licence is implied by a purchase.
Reuse rights
Buying Hailo silicon does not transfer any rights over Hailo's own intellectual property: the sale terms state that the seller retains title to the product designs, drawings, masks, schematics and embedded software, and grants no implied licence. Customers may use the designation "EMPOWERED BY HAILO" on end products, packaging and related marketing under the conditions set out in those terms. Data that a customer processes through Hailo devices stays under that customer's control, since Hailo is only a processor for it. Personal data Hailo collects itself serves service delivery, support, analytics, security, marketing and recruitment, on the legal bases of contract, legitimate interests, consent and legal obligation.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
Section 9 of the privacy policy states that user information may be maintained, processed and stored by Hailo, its authorised affiliates and its service providers in the EU. No individual country is named, only the region. Where Hailo processes personal data on behalf of a business customer, the storage location is whatever that customer permits and requires. For transfers, Hailo says each service provider either gives adequate safeguards including the EU Standard Contractual Clauses, or holds the data in a jurisdiction the European Commission has recognised as adequate, or processes it on the basis of your consent to its own privacy policy. Amazon Web Services is named among the hosting providers. Note that this covers the data Hailo itself collects through its websites and services; inference performed on Hailo processors runs on the customer's own device and does not reach Hailo at all.
Where Hailo works
Country-level availability.
Not available in
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Hailo.
- Budgeting is impossible from the site alone: no price is published, so every cost question routes through sales or a reseller
- Documentation, downloads and support all sit behind a Developer Zone account that must be approved before you can evaluate anything
- No Data Processing Agreement, no Article 27 EU representative and no named data protection officer, despite an EU headquarters in Munich
- Only two email addresses are genuinely published — info@hailo.ai in structured data and privacy@hailo.ai behind Cloudflare obfuscation — while the seven office links on the Contact page lead nowhere
- Export restrictions name specific countries and regions, so check eligibility before designing Hailo silicon into a product
- Commercial terms favour the seller: orders cannot be cancelled without written approval, products are non-returnable outside the RMA process, and warranty runs one year from shipment
- Running AI locally protects privacy from the cloud but not from the device owner: perimeter protection, access control and re-identification workloads still raise real surveillance questions for the people being filmed
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
High, and unavoidably so. You must integrate physical hardware — choosing a form factor, then handling thermals and power — before writing a line of code. The software path means compiling and quantising a model, allocating resources and deploying a runtime, which assumes embedded skills, C/C++ or Python, Linux and often GStreamer video pipelines or a Yocto build. Hailo softens this with example applications, GitHub repositories, an emulator, a profiler and guided Developer Zone journeys, but a Developer Zone account is mandatory and nothing can be evaluated without the hardware in hand.
Deployment
Integrations
Behind Hailo
Fundraising
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Frequently asked questions
Is Hailo a cloud service?
How much does it cost?
Does Hailo offer an API?
Which operating systems and architectures are supported?
Can I run a large language model locally?
Is the documentation public?
What is the minimum age to use the services?
Where is user data hosted?
Which certifications does Hailo claim?
Are there country restrictions?
Should you pick Hailo?
Hailo is one of the more substantial names in edge AI silicon: founded in 2017, more than $340 million raised as of April 2024, over 300 claimed customers and offices across seven countries. What makes the offer coherent is not any single chip but the fact that one software suite spans the entire range, so a team that learns the Dataflow Compiler and HailoRT for a Hailo-8 can move to a Hailo-10H or a Hailo-15 without starting over. The interface choices are unusually pragmatic for a chip vendor: C/C++ and Python bindings, a GStreamer plugin, ONNX Runtime support, an open-source runtime on GitHub, and a REST API that speaks the Ollama and OpenAI dialects.
The reservations are mostly about access rather than engineering. No price appears anywhere on the site — the Shop page is a distributor directory with no figures — so budgeting means talking to sales or to a reseller. Documentation, software downloads and even the customer support page sit behind a Developer Zone account. On the legal side, the company hosts user data in the EU, names its sub-processors and answers privacy requests at a published address, but it publishes no DPA, designates no GDPR Article 27 representative despite a Munich EU headquarters, and never claims GDPR compliance in so many words. Contracts are firm: one-year warranty from shipment, EXW delivery, no returns outside the RMA process, evaluation boards supplied as-is, and named export restrictions on several countries.
This is a tool for engineering teams building a product, not for an end user looking to try something. If your constraint is latency, bandwidth, power or keeping data on the device, Hailo deserves a place on the shortlist — provided you can accept an opaque price and a gated developer portal.
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