Axelera AI has raised more than $450m and is looking to take on US chip giant Nvidia.
Dutch chipmaker Axelera AI is hoping to benefit from European businesses wanting to run AI systems locally, amid data security concerns, a push towards European sovereignty, and geopolitical tensions.
Axelera AI, founded in 2021, is one of the few European challengers challenging the dominance of US chip market leader Nvidia. In the US, the likes of Amazon and Google also design their own chips.
Axelera AI makes chips and software for inference, the computing process of running an AI model, as opposed to training an AI model, which has become increasingly important as more enterprises embrace AI. Nvidia last year acquired assets from Groq, a key player in the inference market.
Axelera AI’s chips are designed for use on edge devices, such as mobile phones and smart cameras, as it looks to make AI more energy efficient by processing data directly on devices rather than relying on large data centres.
Axelera AI recently announced that it had raised more than $250m, with backing from new investor BlackRock. It has raised more than $450m to date, from a mix of European and US investors, and employs more than 200 people. It has two chips on the market, one called Metis, another called Europa, and a third to come called Titania.
Fabrizio Del Maffeo, CEO and co-founder of Axelera AI, said: “Sovereignty is extremely important, because we can answer the needs of Europe. But I started this company not because of sovereignty. A company can’t survive only on the concept of sovereignty. Definitely, we want to play in this sovereignty moment, particularly with a lot of tension around the world and the need for local technology.”
But he said Axelera AI wants to be a global player, pointing to its growing presence in North America and footprint in India and China. The startup’s 350 enterprise customers encompass sectors including defence, retail, robotics and agriculture. Sectors like defence, robotics and cyber lend themselves to processing data locally.
Axelera AI says it’s a must in defence, for privacy, security and resilience reasons. Del Maffeo said: “There are some sectors where there is more sensitivity, like the defence sector.
“It’s a sector, where more and more companies want to be free, have local technology, stay close to customers; it is considered very important.”
In defence, for instance, edge computing means that military units can operate when major communication links are jammed or cut and allows anonymous teams, such as drone swarms, to coordinate manoeuvres without relying on distant servers.
Meanwhile, Del Maffeo has called on European governments and European businesses to be more willing to buy emerging tech, taking a lead from the US. He said: “It is the fact that new technologies are adopted immediately by the government. It was the first customer of Intel, it was the first customer of SpaceX. The government is the first customer. Without the commitment of NASA, SpaceX would fail, it would just crash. We miss this in Europe. We don’t have the European DARPA (Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency). We don’t have the government as a first customer. And we don’t have corporations as the second customer. Corporations in Europe wait for the technology to mature. American corporations adopt technologies.”
While a future IPO is not imminent, Del Maffeo would not want to be wedded to a particular IPO market.
He said: “I think we should be very pragmatic and understand where we can create more value for our shareholders, create more value for the community, and have more access to capital. I don’t buy this idea that we are European, we go in Europe, we should be open.”