Axelera AI raises $68 million Series B funding

SILICON VALLEY, Calif. and EINDHOVEN, Netherlands — Axelera AI, a provider of purpose-built artificial intelligence (AI) hardware acceleration technology for generative AI and computer vision inference, has announced its successful close of an oversubscribed $68 million Series B financing round.

This latest round brings the total amount raised to $120 million. Axelera AI has spent the past three years building a team of 180+ employees (including 55+ PhD’s with more than 40,000 citations according to the company), launched its Metis AI Platform, and has visibility into a strong business pipeline which exceeds $100 million. This success they said 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 and Samsung Catalyst Fund among many others. 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.

Axelera AI said its growth strategy is also eyeing 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.

“There’s no denying that the AI industry has the potential to transform a multitude of sectors,” said Fabrizio Del Maffeo, cofounder 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.”

“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 is currently shipping evaluation kits. Additional details can be found at https://www.axelera.ai/metis-evaluation-kit.