European AI Startup Axelera AI Closes $27 Million Series A

(BUSINESS WIRE) -- European AI startup Axelera AI announced today the close of its $27 million Series A investment round.

The funding will support Axelera AI’s launch and mass production of its first-generation AI acceleration platform, powered by its disruptive in-memory computing and dataflow. Since its inception and initial funding last year, Axelera AI successfully taped-out its first testbench chip, developed entirely in-house, proving the performance and efficiency of in-memory compute for AI computations [Link]. Axelera AI will also further expand its team.

Axelera AI is designing the world’s most efficient and advanced solutions for AI at the edge. The company will empower thousands of more efficient and accessible edge AI applications and will be fully integrated with leading open-sourced AI frameworks when it launches to select customers and partners in early 2023.

Jonathan Ballon, former VP and GM of Intel’s Edge AI and IoT business, will serve as Chairman of Axelera AI.

“The closing of this investment round comes closely after our Thetis Core announcement, proving our technology’s advantages to the AI community. We are excited to work with our investors to become a leader in European AI, strengthening the continent’s presence in the global sector,” said Fabrizio del Maffeo, Axelera AI CEO and co-founder.

The funding round was led by Innovation Industries and joined by imec.xpand and the Federal Holding and Investment Company of Belgium (SFPIM). In addition, the Netherland Enterprise Agency (RVO) awarded Axelera AI $6.7 million of Innovation Credit (Innovatiekrediet), a special loan reserved for highly innovative and impactful projects, commissioned by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy.

Axelera AI will shortly announce its first product and begin raising for its Series B.

About Axelera

Axelera AI is designing the world’s most powerful and advanced solutions for AI at the edge. Its game-changing hardware and software product will concentrate the AI computational power of an entire server into a single chip at a fraction of the power consumption and price of AI hardware today. Headquartered at Eindhoven’s High Tech Campus AI Innovation Center, Axelera AI has R&D offices in Belgium, Switzerland, and Italy. Its team of experts in AI software and hardware hail from top AI firms and Fortune 500 companies. For more information see: www.axelera.ai

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