Dutch AI Semiconductor Startup Axelera AI Launches With $12 Million Seed Round
AI semiconductor startup Axelera AI announced today 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 research and development focused on integrating world-class hardware and software technologies for edge and cloud-to-edge enterprise solutions, Axelera AI joined forces with imec in 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 (BE) and Zurich (CH). The company has already recruited an elite 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. We look forward to building on our extensive R&D and introducing new solutions across the globe over the next few years.”
Axelera AI is designing the world’s most efficient and advanced solutions for AI at the edge. Its game-changing hardware and software product will concentrate the AI computational power of an entire server into a single chip at a fraction of the power consumption and price of AI hardware today. The company’s groundbreaking solution will empower thousands of applications of AI at the edge, making the use of AI more efficient and accessible than ever before. Axelera AI’s products will be fully integrated with the leading open-sourced AI frameworks when it launches to select customers and partners in early 2022.
To view this piece of content from cts.businesswire.com, please give your consent at the top of this page.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210915005028/en/
Contact information
Felipe Augusto Chies
press@axelera.ai
About Business Wire
For more than 50 years, Business Wire has been the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure.
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
International Chamber of Commerce, Carbon Measures Announce First Group of Global Experts for Carbon Accounting Panel19.1.2026 07:00:00 EET | Press release
The International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) and Carbon Measures today announced the first cohort of experts selected to serve on the Technical Expert Panel on Carbon Accounting, which will define the principles, scope and real-world applications of a carbon emissions accounting system. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260118104674/en/ The panelists are distinguished leaders and experts across industry, science, civil society, and academia – representing diverse disciplines, geographies, and professional backgrounds. The panel will apply their experience across sustainability, technology, public policy, and industrial and financial systems to establish a timely, accurate and verifiable ledger-based carbon emissions accounting system. This system will track product-level emissions across the value chain and support real-world decision-making by companies, standards-setters, and policymakers globally. The first gr
AI-Powered Creator Monetisation Platform, Fanvue, Hits $100m Run Rate and Raises $22m Series A Investment - as Leading Global Creators Rush to Join the Platform19.1.2026 02:01:00 EET | Press release
Fanvue, the AI-powered creator monetisation platform with a $100m-plus run rate, has announced a $22m Series A investment round. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260112458975/en/ Joel Morris, Will Monange and Harry Fitzgerald (left to right) Fanvue has bet big on AI-powered tools changing the face of an industry estimated to be worth over $500B by 2030. The platform, which recently crossed $100m annualised revenue, has over 17 million monthly active users, and is home to 250,000 creators who are using Fanvue’s pioneering AI tools to scale their businesses and earn. Instead of competing with legacy platforms, Fanvue is defining a new category, the Creator AI Economy. Fanvue’s belief is that the next generation of creators will accelerate their earnings through utilising technology. And it’s happening in real time. According to Fanvue, just over 93% of creators on the platform used at least one of the platform’s
ClickHouse Raises $400M Series D Led by Dragoneer to Accelerate Expansion Across Analytics and AI Infrastructure16.1.2026 16:30:00 EET | Press release
ClickHouse, a leader in real-time analytics, data warehousing, observability, and AI/ML, announced today the close of its Series D financing, raising $400 million. The round was led by Dragoneer Investment Group, with participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, GIC, Index Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc., and WCM Investment Management. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260116008883/en/ ClickHouse Co-Founders (left to right): Yury Izrailevsky, Aaron Katz, Alexey Milovidov The financing follows a period of sustained, accelerating growth for ClickHouse. The company now serves more than 3,000 customers on its fully managed service, ClickHouse Cloud, with ARR growing more than 250 percent year over year. Over the past three months, customers including Capital One, Lovable, Decagon, Polymarket, and Airwallex have adopted the platform or expand
Qualcomm Announces Quarterly Cash Dividend16.1.2026 16:00:00 EET | Press release
Qualcomm Incorporated (NASDAQ: QCOM) today announced a quarterly cash dividend of $0.89 per common share, payable on March 26, 2026, to stockholders of record at the close of business on March 5, 2026. About Qualcomm Qualcomm relentlessly innovates to deliver intelligent computing everywhere, helping the world tackle some of its most important challenges. Building on our 40 years of technology leadership in creating era-defining breakthroughs, we deliver a broad portfolio of solutions built with our leading-edge AI, high-performance, low-power computing, and unrivaled connectivity. Our Snapdragon® platforms power extraordinary consumer experiences, and our Qualcomm Dragonwing™ products empower businesses and industries to scale to new heights. Together with our ecosystem partners, we enable next-generation digital transformation to enrich lives, improve businesses, and advance societies. At Qualcomm, we are engineering human progress. Qualcomm Incorporated includes our licensing busine
Nominations open for The MIDORI Prize for Biodiversity 2026 by AEON Environmental Foundation and the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity16.1.2026 10:00:00 EET | Press release
The call for nominations for The MIDORI Prize for Biodiversity 2026 is open from 2 February to 31 March 2026. Nominations are invited from members of the public through the AEON Environmental Foundation website at https://www.aeonkankyozaidan.or.jp/en/prize/. The Award Ceremony and Award Winners Forum of the 2026 edition of the Prize will be held on 27 August in Tokyo, Japan. These events will contribute to the global mobilization around COP 17 of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which will take place in Yerevan (Armenia) under the theme of “Taking action for Nature”. Co-organized by the AEON Environmental Foundation and the Secretariat of the CBD, the Prize is awarded to individuals who make outstanding contributions to global biodiversity-related objectives, including the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, and other environmental challenges such as climate change. To date, 21 individuals from 20 countries have received the prize. Established by the AEON En
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom