Dutch chipmaker Axelera AI has strengthened its financial position through a capital round. The company raised 64 million euros.
Axelera AI wants to target the data center industry with new chips. As the name suggests, the chips should specifically support AI applications. The chips should accelerate inference, making AI applications faster. In addition, the company wants its offerings to address further challenges around power consumption, cost, and scalability. Earlier, the company released an offering to run AI applications locally.
A capital round in which 64 million euros were raised should provide sufficient funds to transition to the data center industry. The Dutch innovation fund Invest-NL participated in the investment round, and one non-European investor was also snared: Samsung Catalyst Fund.
Taking on Nvidia’s dominance
In the data center industry, Axelera AI is up against Nvidia. The company dominates the AI market, which desperately needs the data center industry to quickly process mostly heavy AI workloads. It has already earned Nvidia the title of most valuable company in the world. The offerings for the data center industry today also do not extend much beyond what Nvidia has to offer; Axelera AI aims to supplement the limited offerings.
Axelera AI at least has the advantage of focusing exclusively on manufacturing for AI. The more recent interest in that market has already given the Eindhoven-based company considerable expansion potential: “In less than three years, we have already raised $120 million and hired over 180 employees,” CEO Fabrizia Del Maffeo reports to De Tijd.
Also read: Nvidia overtakes Microsoft to become the world’s most valuable company