Axelera AI, a Dutch manufacturer of artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor chips, raised USD 27 million in a Series A funding round led by Innovation Industries, with participation from Imec.xpand and the Federal Holding and Investment Company of Belgium. Additionally, the company also secured a USD 6.7 million loan from the Netherland Enterprise Agency. This round brings the company’s total funding to USD 45.7 million.

The company plans to use the funding to support the launch of its first-generation AI acceleration platform, and the mass production of its semiconductor chips. Axelera AI also plans to expand its employee base. 

Analyst QuickTake: Axelera AI offers a similar solution to Blaize , Kneron , SiMa.ai , and Syntiant . This space has seen a recent influx of funding with Kneron having raised USD 48 million earlier this month, and SiMa.ai and Synitiant having raised  USD 30 million in May, and USD 55 million in March, respectively. While Axelera looks to be comparatively late to commercialization (expecting to begin delivering to customers only by 1H 2023), it claims that its chips will be able to run AI models at a fraction of the electricity consumption (testing at 48 TOPs/Watt against Blaize’s 2.7 TOPs/Watt) and price of competing AI hardware, by using in-memory computing.