Axelera AI, a European AI semiconductor company focused on edge and data center acceleration, announced it has secured more than $250 million in new funding to accelerate global commercial growth. The round was led by funds managed by Innovation Industries, with participation from new investors including BlackRock and SiteGround Capital, as well as existing backers Bitfury, CDP Venture Capital, European Innovation Council Fund, SFPIM, Invest-NL, Samsung Catalyst Fund, and Verve Ventures.
With this latest round, Axelera AI has now attracted over $450 million in equity, grants, and venture debt since its incorporation in July 2021. The company said the raise represents the largest investment to date in an EU-based AI semiconductor company.
The funding comes as Axelera AI ships to its 500th global customer across physical AI and edge AI deployments in sectors including defense and public safety, industrial manufacturing, retail, agritech, robotics, and security. The company positions itself as a leader in power-efficient AI inference solutions to address the growing need for AI systems that can operate within real-world energy and thermal constraints.
Axelera AI’s strategy centers on solving one of AI’s most pressing bottlenecks: power consumption and cooling requirements. As AI workloads increasingly move from centralized data centers to the edge, infrastructure limitations around energy availability, bandwidth, and heat dissipation have become critical barriers to deployment. The company’s edge-first architecture is designed to deliver high AI inference performance within constrained power and thermal envelopes, enabling organizations to process data locally while preserving privacy and supporting sovereign AI requirements.
The inference market is projected to exceed $250 billion by 2030, with inference costs over a model’s lifecycle significantly outpacing training costs. Axelera AI argues that as enterprises shift from experimentation to production-scale AI, efficient inference hardware will become foundational infrastructure. Its tightly integrated hardware and software stack is built to simplify deployment and maximize inference performance, with its Europa and Metis platforms engineered to balance price and performance within edge computing environments.
The edge AI semiconductor market has attracted more than $60 billion in venture funding over the past three years, creating a fragmented vendor landscape. Axelera AI says its financial backing, scaled manufacturing partnerships with TSMC and Samsung, and expanding ecosystem of software and integration partners differentiate it in a crowded field.
In addition to hardware innovation, the company has focused on ecosystem development. Its Partner Accelerator Network brings together software vendors, model developers, system integrators, and technology partners to streamline deployment and reduce time-to-production. The company has also invested heavily in software tools and usability, enabling developers to integrate its acceleration capabilities into existing AI workflows without major redesign.
Proceeds from the new capital will support manufacturing scale-up, expansion of the customer success organization, growth of the Partner Accelerator Network, and continued development of the company’s software tools and SDK.
KEY QUOTES:
“Data centers are hitting power and cooling limits, and as analytics move closer to where data is being created, edge AI solutions must operate within strict energy and bandwidth constraints. We designed our architecture from the ground up to overcome these obstacles. Our edge-first approach isn’t just about efficiency; it’s about making AI deployment economically viable at scale for real-world applications while protecting data and privacy by processing customer information locally.”
Fabrizio Del Maffeo, CEO and Co-Founder, Axelera AI
“Axelera is solving one of the most fundamental constraints in Edge AI adoption: the cost and energy efficiency of inference at scale. We believe the company is uniquely positioned to become a foundational player in the next generation of AI infrastructure, and we’re excited to back the outstanding Axelera team that combines deep technical leadership and real commercial execution.”
Rogier Ketelaars, Investment Manager, Innovation Industries
“SiteGround Capital is proud to join Axelera AI on this exciting journey. Axelera’s approach to AI acceleration—bringing inference to the edge where data is created—directly addresses two of the most pressing challenges facing the AI industry: the unsustainable energy demands of centralized data centers and growing privacy concerns. This is the right technology, led by the right team, at precisely the right moment in the market.”
Ivo Tzenov, Founder, SiteGround
“Axelera AI’s thesis has always been clear: as AI moves from building models to putting them to work, the compute demands of running AI will far outpace training it. That requires a fundamentally different chip architecture, purpose-built to process data at speed—at low power and cost—right where it’s generated. This more than $250 million investment reflects growing market conviction that this team has built exactly that.”
Jonathan Ballon, Chairman, Axelera AI
“Axelera AI was created and incubated within Bitfury, giving us a unique perspective on the team’s execution and vision from the very beginning. The company’s progression from an internal initiative to a standalone business with meaningful customer traction and market validation underscores both the strength of the leadership team and the relevance of its technology. Axelera’s approach to high-performance, energy-efficient AI inference positions it to play a defining role in the next generation of AI deployment. We’re excited to continue backing the company as it scales globally.”
Val Vavilov, Group CEO, Bitfury
“CDP Venture Capital is proud to continue investing in Axelera to establish a European leader in fast and efficient AI inference hardware, taking advantage of rapidly growing markets across key sectors such as space and defense. Axelera is expanding rapidly, developing a unique HPC chip solution, and building strong collaborations with key partners. The time is right to develop high performance inference solutions that enable better privacy standards and support the European quest for sovereign AI solutions.”
Alessandro Scortecci, Direct Investments Director, CDP Venture Capital
“The European Investment Council is pleased to support Axelera AI as they scale their AI acceleration technology. This investment reflects our commitment to fostering European deep tech innovation that addresses global challenges. Axelera’s edge AI solutions directly tackle two critical issues—reducing the massive energy consumption of AI infrastructure and ensuring data sovereignty—while demonstrating strong commercial traction with customers worldwide. This is exactly the type of strategic innovation Europe needs to maintain its competitive edge in the global AI economy.”
Svetoslava Georgieva, Chair, EIC Fund Board
“As a Dutch investor, we’re proud to support homegrown innovation that’s competing on the global stage in AI acceleration. The Netherlands has always punched above its weight in semiconductor technology, and this team exemplifies that heritage. Their customer traction across Europe and beyond, combined with a solution that addresses both the energy transition challenges we face locally and the global data sovereignty concerns, makes this a strategic investment for our portfolio. The leadership team’s experience scaling deep tech companies gives us confidence they can build a true European champion in AI infrastructure.”
Johan Stins, Invest-NL
“Samsung Catalyst Fund aims to identify and support category-defining entrepreneurs and emerging companies at the intersection of semiconductor innovation and AI. Axelera AI developed a differentiated edge-first AI inference architecture. We are pleased to continue to support the team as they execute to capture a massive market opportunity.”
Dede Goldschmidt, SVP & Managing Director, Head of Samsung Catalyst Fund
“SFPIM plays an important role in the long-term stability of the Belgian economy by contributing to the anchoring of strategic assets through “smart capital solutions.” We continue to invest in Axelera AI because their market is inflecting right now. Indeed, the customers are actively seeking alternatives to centralized cloud AI but also privacy regulations are tightening and energy costs are escalating. The experienced Axelera team has built technology that meets this momentum, and the customer adoption rates validate the urgent need. Through this investment, SFPIM aims to strengthen Axelera’s links with Belgium, particularly through research and development centers in Leuven, university partnerships, and ecosystems. Axelera can play a significant role in Belgium and Europe in terms of economic sovereignty in the semiconductor sector.”
Alan Vandenberghe, Investment Manager, SFPIM
