Eindhoven-based Axelera AI, a company that claims to be creating the next generation of AI hardware and software, announced on Tuesday that it has raised $27M (approximately €27M) in a Series A round of funding.
The round was led by Innovation Industries and joined by imec.xpand, a venture fund associated with the IMEC nanotechnology research lab, and the Federal Holding and Investment Company of Belgium (SFPIM).
Receives €6.7M Innovation Credit
Additionally, the Netherland Enterprise Agency (RVO) awarded Axelera AI $6.7M (approximately €6.7M) of Innovation Credit (Innovatiekrediet), a special loan reserved for highly innovative and impactful projects, commissioned by the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy.
In a statement, Axelera AI reported that it will shortly announce its first product and begin raising for a Series B round.
Capital utilisation
Axelera AI says it will use the funds to support the launch and mass production of its first-generation AI acceleration platform, which runs on its in-memory computing and dataflow technology. The company will also invest in further expanding its team.
Since its inception and initial funding last year, Axelera AI its first testbench chip, developed in-house, proving the performance and efficiency of in-memory compute for AI computations.
Fabrizio del Maffeo, Axelera AI CEO and co-founder, says, “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.”
“Leading the democratisation of AI”
Founded in 2021 by Fabrizio Del Maffeo and Evangelos Eleftheriou, Axelera AI is designing the world’s most efficient and advanced solutions for AI at the edge. With a fraction of the power consumption and cost of current AI technology, the company’s hardware and software solution would consolidate the AI processing capacity of an entire server into a single chip.
The company says it will empower thousands of 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.
Headquartered at Eindhoven’s High Tech Campus AI Innovation Center, Axelera AI has its R&D offices in Belgium, Switzerland, and Italy. The company’s team of experts in AI software and hardware hail from top AI firms and Fortune 500 companies.
