The Great Pyramid of M5Stack

All the mysteries of the pyramids have finally been solved! It turns out they were built by M5Stack for the purpose of local AI inference and edge intelligence deployments. At least that is the case if you are talking about the AI Pyramid Pro that was just launched, rather than the pyramids made of stone blocks thousands of years ago.

The AI Pyramid Pro is a compact, pyramid-shaped AI PC designed to bring serious machine learning horsepower out of the cloud and directly onto the desktop or the edge. At the core of the device is the Axera AX8850 system-on-chip, pairing an octa-core Arm Cortex-A55 CPU with a dedicated neural processing unit capable of delivering up to 24 TOPS of INT8 performance. This combination allows the Pyramid Pro to comfortably handle workloads such as computer vision, multimodal interaction, speech processing, and even on-device large language model inference.

To keep those AI models well fed, the system includes 8GB of high-bandwidth LPDDR4x memory on a 64-bit bus, along with 32GB of onboard eMMC storage. A dedicated hardware video engine further expands its capabilities, supporting H.264 and H.265 encoding and decoding up to 8K at 30 frames per second, as well as parallel decoding of up to sixteen 1080p video streams. This makes the AI Pyramid Pro particularly well suited for vision analytics, smart security systems, and multi-camera gateways.

The device also offers dual HDMI 2.0 ports, one for input and one for output, enabling flexible video workflows at up to 4K@60Hz. Dual Gigabit Ethernet ports support high-throughput networking or segmented networks, while four USB-A 3.0 ports and two USB Type-C ports provide ample room for peripherals and expansion. One of the Type-C ports supports USB Power Delivery up to 100W, simplifying power and cabling for desktop or field deployments.

An onboard STM32 coprocessor manages power monitoring, user buttons, an OLED status display, and a ring of 48 RGB LEDs. Audio support is equally robust, with a multi-microphone array, onboard speaker amplifier, and codec aimed at voice interaction and smart assistant use cases.

With native support for Axera’s AXCL deployment tools, the AI Pyramid Pro is a ready-to-use platform for edge AI developers. From local smart photo albums and Home Assistant integrations to AI vision gateways and intelligent security systems, this modern pyramid is clearly built not to guard ancient secrets, but to unlock practical, localized AI. You can currently pick one up for $249.