Netherlands-based Edge AI chip startup Axelera AI has raised $68 million in a Series B funding round.
The oversubscribed round included participation from the European Innovation Council Fund, the Innovation Industries Strategic Partners Fund, Samsung Catalyst Fund, and Verve Ventures.
It brings the total raised by the company since its 2021 inception to $120 million.
Axelera AI is developing AI processing units (AIPUs) that allow AI software to be run at the network Edge, as opposed to inside data centers. Built on RISC-V and in-memory architecture to provide faster data processing and retrieval, the company says that by deploying its technology at the Edge it speeds up both AI inference and interactions.
Axelera AI claims that its hardware offering, dubbed Metis, is the most powerful AI chip for Edge devices. In addition to building its AIPUs, the company also develops the software that runs them.
“There’s no denying that the AI industry has the potential to transform a multitude of sectors,” said Fabrizio Del Maffeo, co-founder and CEO at Axelera AI.
He added: “This funding supports our mission to democratize access to artificial intelligence, from the Edge to the cloud. By expanding our product lines beyond the Edge computing market, we are able to address industry challenges in AI inference and support current and future AI processing needs with our scalable, proven technology.”
Headquartered in Eindhoven, the Netherlands – the same town where photolithography equipment maker ASML is based – the company employs 180 people across Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, and the UK.
In an interview with TechCrunch, Del Maffeo said the company is also looking to enter the data center chip market and is looking to potentially develop chips for high-performance computing.
“Axelera AI is now developing a new generation of products for computer vision, large language models, and large multimodal models,” he told the news outlet. “This new product family will be unveiled later this year and enter full production in 2025.”
