Axelera AI raises $68 million to accelerate development of next-generation AI

In just three years, Axelera AI has built a team of 180+ employees (including 55+ PhDs with over 40,000 citations), launched the Metis AI Platform, and developed a strong business plan worth over $100 million. This success has attracted diverse global funding from venture capital, sovereign wealth and pension funds.

Axelera AI's Series B funding round is Europe's largest in the semiconductor industry without a fablab. It was backed by major institutional investors including Invest-NL's Deep Tech Fund, the European Innovation Council Fund, Innovation Industries' Strategic Partners Fund (backed by Dutch pension funds PMT and PME, managed by MN) and Samsung Catalyst Fund, as well as existing investors Verve Ventures, Innovation Industries, Fractionelera and Italian sovereign fund CDP Venture Capital SGR.

The new capital is added to previously raised funds, including an innovation loan from RVO, as well as equity investments from Bitfury, CDP Venture Capital, the Belgian Federal Holding and Investment Company (SFPIM), imec, imec.xpand and Innovation Industries.

While companies are utilizing innovative new ways to incorporate computer vision and generative AI into business models, there are significant challenges around power consumption, cost, limited supply and scalability that are thought to be holding back the true potential of AI.

Axelera AI offers solutions that deliver both performance and efficiency, and this new capital will enable the company to develop its sought-after artificial intelligence solutions based on its proprietary digital in-memory computing and RISC-V technology.

The Series B financing is also expected to help expand Axelera AI's global expansion with a focus on growth opportunities in North America, Europe and the Middle East. In addition, the capital supports expansion in key vertical markets such as automotive, digital health, Industry 4.0, retail, robots and drones, and video surveillance.

The funding will also enable Axelera AI to expand its future product offerings from the edge to the data center to meet the growing computing needs for generative AI, large language models and large multimodal models. Market expansion includes high-performance computing by developing high-performance, high-throughput and cost-competitive AI gas pedals for future exa- and peta-scale HPC centers.

"There's no denying that the AI industry has the potential to change many industries," says Fabrizio Del Maffeo, co-founder and CEO of Axelera AI. "However, to truly harness the benefits of artificial intelligence, organizations need a solution that delivers high performance and efficiency at a balanced cost. This funding supports our mission to democratize access to artificial intelligence, from the edge to the cloud. By expanding our product line beyond the edge computing market, we will be able to address industry challenges in AI inference and support current and future AI processing needs with our scalable, proven technology."

IDC predicts that the IT infrastructure for semiconductors with artificial intelligence will reach $193 billion by the end of 2027.