Axelera AI Raises $68 Million Series B Funding to Accelerate Next-Generation Artificial Intelligence

News Highlights:

• Powering Global Innovation: Mass adoption of Axelera AI’s Metis™ AI Processing Unit (AIPU), the world's most powerful AIPU for edge devices, drives next-gen AI inference solutions for computer vision and generative AI.

• Accelerating Market Expansion: Europe's largest, oversubscribed Series B funding in fabless semiconductors propels Axelera AI into new markets, including automotive and high-performance computing.

• Driving Business Momentum: $100 million business pipeline and strong customer demand validates Axelera AI’s position as the AI industry’s partner of choice to unlock innovation.

Axelera AI, the leading provider of purpose-built AI hardware acceleration technology for generative AI and computer vision inference, today announced its successful close of an oversubscribed $68 million Series B financing round, bringing the total amount raised to $120 million. In just three years, Axelera AI has built a world-class team of 180+ employees (including 55+ PhD’s with more than 40,000 citations), launched its Metis™ AI Platform which achieves a 3-5x increase in efficiency and performance, and has visibility into a strong business pipeline which exceeds $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 oversubscribed Series B funding round in the fabless semiconductor industry. It is backed by major institutional investors, including Invest-NL Deep Tech Fund, the European Innovation Council Fund, Innovation Industries Strategic Partners Fund (backed by Dutch Pension Funds PMT and PME, administered by MN) and Samsung Catalyst Fund, along with existing investors Verve Ventures, Innovation Industries, Fractionelera and the Italian sovereign fund CDP Venture Capital SGR. The new capital adds to previously raised funds, including the innovation credit from RVO, and equity investment from Bitfury, CDP Venture Capital, Federal Holding and Investment Company of Belgium (SFPIM), imec, imec.xpand and Innovation Industries.

Companies are embracing new and innovative ways to incorporate computer vision and generative AI capabilities into business models. However, challenges associated with energy consumption, cost, limited supply and scalability are inhibiting the true potential of AI. Axelera AI addresses these exact industry challenges by providing a solution that delivers unmatched performance and efficiency. This new capital enables Axelera AI to grow its high demand AI inference solutions based on its proprietary digital in-memory computing and RISC-V technology.

Axelera AI’s growth strategy also eyes opportunities across new geographies and market sectors. The Series B funding fosters global expansion for Axelera AI with a focus on growth opportunities in North America, Europe and the Middle East. In addition, the capital facilitates expansion across key vertical markets such as automotive, digital healthcare, Industry 4.0, retail, robots & drones, surveillance and more. The funding also enables Axelera AI to broaden its future product offerings from the edge to the data center to address the growing computing needs for generative AI, large language models and large multi-modal models. This market expansion includes high-performance computing by designing high efficiency, high-performance and price-competitive AI accelerators to power future exa-scale and peta-scale HPC centers.

“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. “However, to truly harness the value of AI, organizations need a solution that delivers high-performance and efficiency while balancing cost. 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.”

IDC forecasts that IT infrastructure for AI semiconductors will reach $193 billion by the end of 2027. To address this market demand, Axelera AI’s Metis™ AI Platform, the industry’s most powerful, cost-effective and energy efficient AI processing unit for inference, will be in full production in the second half of 2024.

“We are very excited to support Axelera AI in their Series B financing. The company introduces a very innovative approach for high performance AI acceleration at the edge, by implementing Digital In-Memory Computing,” said Marco Chisari, Head of Samsung Semiconductor Innovation Center and Executive Vice President, Samsung Electronics. “Axelera AI’s architecture minimizes data movement between memory and compute elements, aiming to overcome the “Memory Wall” challenge. It also has the promise of significantly reducing power consumption, a critical attribute for AI applications at the edge and beyond.”

“Axelera AI’s Series B funding round, with backing from venture capital, sovereign and pension funds, underscores the company’s record of delivering industry defining solutions for customers to meet the growing demand for generative AI and computer vision,” said Inder Singh, Axelera AI board member and former CFO of Arm. “With this new funding, Axelera AI will be able to continue to build upon its product offerings and expand into additional markets, in alignment with the progression of the market for GenAI.”

The combination of Axelera AI’s experienced Board of Directors, the executive leadership team and this Series B investment positions Axelera AI to build upon its early customer momentum and further support the needs of AI innovators across vertical markets. Axelera AI customers are currently utilizing the Metis AI Platform within their cutting-edge products to differentiate the unique offerings they bring to their respective markets.

Axelera AI is currently shipping evaluation kits. Additional details can be found here.