09.17.21
AI semiconductor startup Axelera AI announced that it has successfully closed a seed investment round of $12 million. The round was led by emerging technologies leader Bitfury and joined by global nanoelectronics R&D center imec and deep-tech venture capital funds Innovation Industries and imec.xpand. The funding will support the company’s development of an industry-defining product powering AI applications at the edge.
Axelera AI was incubated by Bitfury Group in 2019, formerly operating as Bitfury AI until the company came out as an independent entity this year. Building on its extensive R&D focused on integrating world-class hardware and software technologies for edge and cloud-to-edge enterprise solutions, Axelera AI has also joined forces with imec since early 2020 to develop groundbreaking computing architecture for high-performance AI.
Headquartered in the AI Innovation Center of the High-Tech Campus in Eindhoven, Axelera AI also has R&D offices in Leuven, Belgium and Zurich, Switzerland. The company has already recruited a team of more than 20 senior engineers and developers from world-leading AI companies and research centers, including Intel, Qualcomm, IBM and imec.
“With our launch as a new independent company and the closing of this investment, Axelera AI is now claiming its place as a significant player in the global AI sector,” said Fabrizio del Maffeo, CEO and co-founder of Axelera AI. “Our extraordinary team merges complementary expertise in software development, image processing, dataflow architecture, in-memory computing, algorithms and quantization with a proven track record of business success, and we look forward to building on our extensive R&D, introducing new solutions across the globe in the next few years.”
“Over the years imec has been researching custom circuits and novel architectures for efficient AI using in-memory compute, algorithms and quantization”, said Diederik Verkest, program director for machine learning at imec. "We are proud that after working together with the Bitfury Group, we can leverage and contribute this expertise to ensure Axelera AI develops and brings the best possible product to the edge AI market."
Axelera AI was incubated by Bitfury Group in 2019, formerly operating as Bitfury AI until the company came out as an independent entity this year. Building on its extensive R&D focused on integrating world-class hardware and software technologies for edge and cloud-to-edge enterprise solutions, Axelera AI has also joined forces with imec since early 2020 to develop groundbreaking computing architecture for high-performance AI.
Headquartered in the AI Innovation Center of the High-Tech Campus in Eindhoven, Axelera AI also has R&D offices in Leuven, Belgium and Zurich, Switzerland. The company has already recruited a team of more than 20 senior engineers and developers from world-leading AI companies and research centers, including Intel, Qualcomm, IBM and imec.
“With our launch as a new independent company and the closing of this investment, Axelera AI is now claiming its place as a significant player in the global AI sector,” said Fabrizio del Maffeo, CEO and co-founder of Axelera AI. “Our extraordinary team merges complementary expertise in software development, image processing, dataflow architecture, in-memory computing, algorithms and quantization with a proven track record of business success, and we look forward to building on our extensive R&D, introducing new solutions across the globe in the next few years.”
“Over the years imec has been researching custom circuits and novel architectures for efficient AI using in-memory compute, algorithms and quantization”, said Diederik Verkest, program director for machine learning at imec. "We are proud that after working together with the Bitfury Group, we can leverage and contribute this expertise to ensure Axelera AI develops and brings the best possible product to the edge AI market."