Vertical Compute, a company founded by CEO Sylvain Dubois (ex-Google) and CTO Sebastien Couet (ex-imec), announced that it closed a seed investment round of €20 million. The funding round was led by imec.xpand and supported by a strong investor base, including Eurazeo, XAnge, Vector Gestion and imec. And this funding will support Vertical Compute’s goals of developing a novel vertical integrated memory and compute technology, unlocking a new generation of AI applications.
Vertical Compute’s technology will have a transformative impact, enabling next-generation applications with efficiency and privacy. And by minimizing data movement and bringing large data closer to computation, the innovation ensures energy savings of up to 80%, unlocks hyper-personalized AI solutions, and eliminates the need for remote data transfers, protecting user privacy.
The advancements in large language models and generative AI are transforming virtually all industries at a rapid pace. However, these large-scale AI models still heavily depend on complex cloud infrastructure and high bandwidth memories, leading to data transfer latency, high energy consumption, and sending sensitive data to distant servers. Edge computing can address these issues, but inferencing large AI models on smartphones, PCs, or smart home devices faces significant cost, power, and scalability constraints.
The big problem is the ‘memory wall.’ Static Random Access Memory (SRAM), integrated as caches of the CPU or GPU, is fast but very small and expensive. And Dynamic Random-Access Memory (DRAM), the main memory of computing systems, is larger but expensive and energy-consuming. The scaling of memory technologies in density and performance is slowing down while processor speeds and market needs keep increasing, causing a significant bottleneck. This problem is rapidly escalating due to the surging demand for AI workloads, requiring vast amounts of data to be accessed quickly. Overcoming this memory wall is crucial for advancing AI inference.
The convergence of large-scale AI-based models and edge computing calls for a transformative shift in processing data. Vertical Compute will capture this opportunity by developing chiplet-based solutions leveraging a new way to store bits in a high aspect ratio vertical structure. And the concept behind Vertical Compute’s technology has been invented by Sebastien Couet, imec’s former Magnetic Program Director. The main innovation resides in integrating vertical data lanes on top of computation units. It has the potential to outperform DRAM in terms of density, cost, and energy by reducing data movements from centimeters to nanometers. And this technology, combined with an ambitious commercialization plan, has led to the creation of this new semiconductor venture.
Vertical Compute is based in Louvain-La-Neuve (BE), with its main R&D offices in Leuven (BE), Grenoble (FR) and Nice (FR). And the company is recruiting an elite team of engineers to support its ambitious R&D goals and accelerate the development and commercialization of its chiplet-based technology.
Sylvain Dubois (CEO of Vertical Compute) is a business executive with strong experience in the deep tech ecosystem. And he’s been working in the compute and memory fields for 25 years. He knew the memory bottleneck problem well and investigated it when he worked for Google.
Sebastien Couet (CTO of Vertical Compute) is a semiconductor R&D expert who has been working for 10 years + at imec – the world-leading R&D and innovation hub in nanoelectronics and digital technologies – to understand the memory roadmap and develop innovative solutions for the next decade.
KEY QUOTES:
“Memory technologies face limitations in both density and performance scaling, while processor performance continues to surge. The extreme data access requirements of AI workloads exacerbate this challenge, making it imperative to overcome the memory wall to enable the next wave of AI innovations. We believe going Vertical is the path to 100X gains”
- Sébastien Couet, CTO of Vertical Compute
“The surge in data-intensive applications like generative AI demands a drastic new approach to transferring data between computing cores and memory units. Our solution is designed to overcome the fundamental scaling limitations of memory technologies by going vertical. We are committed to unlocking the full potential of large language models on the edge without any compromise”
“We want to recruit the very best from all over Europe, and finally put Europe at the forefront in terms of tech”
- Sylvain Dubois, CEO of Vertical Compute
“This seed investment round highlights the confidence in the leadership team’s capabilities and the disruptive potential of this game-changing technology. We could not be more excited to collaborate with Sylvain, Sebastien and their team and to help them to achieve their ambitious goals”
- Tom Vanhoutte from imec.xpand
“We are confident that, with the ongoing support of our teams and ecosystem, Vertical Compute can become a disruptor in the semiconductor industry. The strong international investor base shows that we are not alone in this belief.”
- Patrick Vandenameele, co-Chief Operating Officer at imec.
