Eindhoven-based Axelera AI, a company specialising in AI hardware acceleration technology, has secured up to €61.6M in funding from the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking (JU) and member states under the DARE Project.
The EuroHPC JU was created to build, expand, and maintain a unified supercomputing and quantum computing infrastructure to support a competitive high-performance computing ecosystem.
Axelera AI is participating in the DARE consortium to support the EuroHPC JU in developing a European supercomputing ecosystem. The DARE initiative focuses on designing and developing European processors, accelerators, and related technologies for high-performance and emerging applications.
Anders Jensen, EuroHPC JU Executive Director, says, “I am proud to announce the launch of the DARE project which marks a significant milestone for European digital sovereignty. This ambitious initiative will drive innovation in both hardware and software technologies and leverage the full power of HPC and AI to develop secure, efficient and European-led solutions for the future.”
Capital utilisation
The funding will support the development of Titania, an AI inference chiplet designed for computing tasks. The chiplet is based on the company’s Digital In-Memory Computing (D-IMC) architecture, which enables scalability across different computing environments.
Evangelos Eleftheriou, CTO and co-founder of Axelera AI, says, “Our D-IMC technology leverages a future-proof, scalable multi-AI-core architecture, ensuring unparalleled adaptability and efficiency. Enhanced with proprietary RISC-V vector extensions, this versatile mixed-precision platform is engineered to excel across diverse AI workloads.”
“Uniquely, our architecture facilitates scaling from the edge to the cloud, streamlining expansion and optimising performance in ways that traditional cloud-to-edge approaches cannot. We are setting a new standard for AI infrastructure, making true scalability a tangible reality.”
Everything you need to know about Axelera AI’s Titania
The AI market is expanding at a CAGR of over 28 per cent, with most growth driven by inference. New AI models require more computing power, increasing concerns about cloud solutions’ performance, cost, and sustainability. Axelera AI plans to deploy Titania in 2028 to address these challenges.
It aims to improve throughput and efficiency for AI applications and high-performance computing centers. To support this effort, the company will expand research and development teams in the Netherlands, Italy, and Belgium.
Axelera AI’s Titania chiplet-based architecture will combine its D-IMC technology with RISC-V capabilities to address growing AI requirements across sectors such as high-performance computing, data centers, robotics, and automotive.
The D-IMC approach enables scalable performance while reducing power and cooling needs. RISC-V technology with vector extensions allows for adaptability to changing customer demands. Multiple Titania chiplets will be integrated into a System-in-Package (SiP).
Fabrizio Del Maffeo, co-founder & CEO at Axelera AI, says, “This is an important milestone and validation of our technology. Since Axelera AI was founded in July 2021, we have continuously delivered technologies to help customers tackle the AI industry’s biggest challenges and efficiently implement AI capabilities into their products.”
“Today, we deliver a cutting-edge hardware and software platform for accelerating computer vision on edge devices at a fraction of the cost and energy consumption of current solutions. Titania builds upon this unique product suite.”
“We’re grateful to the EuroHPC DARE Project and the countries involved for helping accelerate the development of this groundbreaking AI inference technology for HPC data centers.”
Brief about Axelera AI
Axelera AI develops AI hardware acceleration technology for AI inference, including computer vision and generative AI applications. Its first-generation product, the Metis AI platform, is a hardware and software solution for Edge AI inference.
The company is headquartered in the AI Innovation Center at High Tech Campus in Eindhoven, Netherlands, with R&D offices in Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, and the UK. Axelera AI has over 200 employees, including experts from leading AI firms and Fortune 500 companies.
The company’s latest funding follows a previous $68M Series B financing round, bringing its total funding to over $200M in three years.
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