Axelera AI, a European AI startup, has announced the completion of its $27 million Series A funding round. Headquartered at Eindhoven’s High Tech Campus AI Innovation Center in the Netherlands, with R&D offices in Belgium, Switzerland, and Italy. With a fraction of the power consumption and cost of current AI technology, Axelera AI’s revolutionary hardware and software product would consolidate the AI processing capacity of an entire server into a single chip.
With the help of the funds, Axelera AI would be able to launch and mass produce its first-generation AI acceleration platform, which will be fueled by its “game-changing” in-memory computing and dataflow.
Axelera AI has demonstrated the effectiveness and efficiency of in-memory compute for AI computations since its founding and first funding last year by successfully tape-out its first testbench chip, developed wholly in-house. Axelera AI also intends to further expand its team.
European AI
Axelera AI is designing the world’s most efficient and advanced solutions for AI at the edge. When the company opens to a small group of customers and partners in early 2023, it would enable thousands of edge AI applications that are more effective and accessible and will be completely integrated with top open-sourced AI frameworks.
Axelera AI’s chairman will be Jonathan Ballon, a former vice president and general manager of Intel’s Edge AI and IoT business.
“The closing of this investment round comes closely after our Thetis Core announcement, proving our technology’s advantages to the AI community,” said Fabrizio del Maffeo, CEO and co-founder of Axelera AI. “We are excited to work with our investors to become a leader in European AI, strengthening the continent’s presence in the global sector.”
Innovation Industries led the Series A fundraising round, which also included imec.xpand and the Federal Holding and Investment Company of Belgium (SFPIM). Additionally, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy commissioned the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO) to grant Axelera AI a $6.7 million Innovation Credit (Innovatiekrediet), a unique financing set aside for very innovative and significant initiatives.
Soon, Axelera AI will make its debut and start raising money for its Series B.
