Eindhoven-based Axelera AI, a provider of purpose-built AI hardware acceleration technology for generative AI and computer vision inference, has secured $68M (approximately €63.5M) in a fresh funding round from both existing and new investors.
The fund was backed by existing investors — Innovation Industries, CDP Venture Capital, and Verve Ventures, as well as, Invest-NL, the European Innovation Council, and an investment fund from Samsung Electronics are now also on board, reports fd.nl.
The announcement comes over a year after raising €46.25M in an oversubscribed Series A round.
Axelera will use the funds to expand into new regions and markets, targeting growth in North America, Europe, and the Middle East.
The company also aims to focus on industrial robots, agriculture, automotive, drones, and surveillance.
Additionally, Axelera will compete with Nvidia in the field of generative AI to meet the growing computing demand, says fd.nl.
“We have now raised $120 million in less than three years. That is a lot of money for a chip company without factories,” says co-founder and CEO Fabrizio Del Maffeo in an interview with the FD.
“But it is a drop in the ocean when you look at the potential of the market. We are in Nvidia’s market, the most valuable company in the world,” adds Del Maffeo.
Axelera AI: Leading the democratisation of AI
Founded in 2021 by Fabrizio Del Maffeo and Evangelos Eleftheriou, Axelera AI claims to be developing the world’s most efficient and sophisticated edge AI solutions.
It offers Edge AI solutions through its Metis AI platform.
Last year, the company officially unveiled the new Metis AI Platform, a holistic hardware and software solution to accelerate computer vision processing at the Edge.
The company’s hardware and software solution would compress the AI processing capabilities of an entire server into a single chip at a fraction of the power consumption and expense of existing AI technologies.
Axelera AI, which has offices in Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, and the UK as well as its headquarters at the AI Innovation Centre of the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven, employs more than 180 people across 17 different nations.
The company claims that its team of AI software and hardware professionals includes former employees of Fortune 500 corporations and leading AI organisations.
01
Empowering Ukrainian Startups: Highlights from the PowerUp Ukraine 2024 Conference