Axelera AI raises $27 million from investors during a new round of investment. The European startup wants to use the money to launch and mass produce its energy-efficient chip for AI applications at the 'edge of the network', also known as edge computing. The startup foresees applications in the manufacturing industry, among others.
European startup launched in September 2021 by nanoelectronics and digital technology research and innovation hub imec and blockchain company Bitfury. Axelera AI is responding to the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT), where a wide variety of devices are connected to the internet. More than 125 billion devices are expected to be involved by 2030. These include smartphones, but also smart cameras in cities and sensors the industrial environments.
Gaining insights from growing amount of data
These IoT devices are collecting more and more data. Artificial intelligence (AI) enables insights from this data. However, only a small part of the data is processed in practice. This processing often takes place in a data centre. With edge computing, data processing shifts to the 'edge of the network', meaning processing takes place much closer to the source.
Axelera AI is developing a new generation of chips that integrate the computing power of an entire server into one chip. This with a fraction of the power consumption and price of current AI hardware. The chip should be integratable into devices and be battery-powered.
Operating as Axelera AI since 2021
Axelera was incubated by Bitfury Group in 2019 under the name Bitfury AI. Since early 2020, it has been working with imec to develop a nergy-efficient computing architecture that enables powerful edge AI applications. Since September 2021, Axelera AI has been operating as an independent entity.
The startup is headquartered at the AI Innovation Centre at the High Tech Campus in Eindhoven. It also has R&D centres in Leuven and Zurich, Belgium, as well as offices in Milan, Italy, and Bristol, UK. The startup plans to spread its wings to the US and Taiwan this year.
Test chip successfully tested
The startup announced the successful testing of its first chip - the Thetis Core - in May. The test chip delivered nearly 40 tera of processing per second. The company expects the successor to the Thetis Core to go into production next year.
Axelera AI envisions applications in a variety of sectors. These include retail environments and smart cities, as well as drones and the manufacturing industry.
Author: Wouter Hoeffnagel
Image: Gordon Johnson via Pixabay
