Vertical Compute Secures €20M to Overcome Memory Limitations

Vertical Compute, a Belgian semiconductor startup targeted on optimizing AI chip structure, has raised €20 million in an all-equity seed spherical simply three months after its launch. Co-founder Sylvain Dubois is a former Google semiconductor strategist whereas Sebastien Couet served imec, for over ten years as its chief in R&D within the semiconductor area and hopes to bridge reminiscence bottlenecks that restrain the scalability of AI.

The funding spherical was led by imec.xpand, the enterprise capital arm of R&D hub imec, with participation from French VCs Eurazeo and XAnge, and Swiss investor Vector Gestion. The acquired funds will likely be used to develop its progressive chip structure, which integrates reminiscence straight into processors, eliminating the necessity for pricey and space-intensive high-bandwidth reminiscences (HBMs).

Tackling the Reminiscence Bottleneck:

The present AI chips like Nvidia GPUs rely upon reminiscence HBMs coming primarily from Samsung, Micron, and Hynix. It’s offered for round $10,000 a chip. All this brings alongside excessive value and vitality use in addition to reduces scalability. Reminiscence within the Vertical Compute’s answer will likely be contained in the chip, eliminating centimeters-level knowledge switch that turns into nanometers, boosting efficiency, decreasing value, and likewise reducing vitality use.

“The info is straight away out there with out back-and-forth actions,” defined Dubois. “This innovation drastically reduces prices, and infrastructure wants whereas enhancing vitality effectivity.”

Boosting Edge Computing:

The know-how developed by Vertical Compute is more likely to revolutionize edge computing because it permits the execution of AI computations regionally on units akin to smartphones and laptops, reasonably than on cloud knowledge facilities. This guarantees to scale back latency, decrease vitality consumption, and improve knowledge privateness—necessary elements as AI fashions develop in measurement and complexity.

“It’s not sustainable to rely solely on cloud infrastructure operated by giants like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft,” mentioned Dubois. “We’d like localized, energy-efficient options.”

Although not designed for coaching AI fashions regionally, the chips will likely be essential for inference—the applying of skilled AI fashions to new knowledge.

Strategic Collaborations and Progress Plans:

Vertical Compute is just not going to fabricate full chips however will design reminiscence layers create check merchandise in-house after which outsource the manufacturing to world foundries akin to TSMC. The corporate will promote its know-how to giant semiconductor corporations akin to Nvidia, AMD, and Intel for a aggressive benefit in AI reminiscence options.

Regardless of its world aspirations, Vertical Compute stays a European firm at coronary heart.

“Europe wants corporations like this,” Dubois mentioned. “We’re constructing a European firm with European expertise to foster innovation regionally.”

The corporate will rent 30 new individuals in Belgium and France inside a yr. It can open a French subsidiary shortly, tapping into the semiconductor hubs of Grenoble and Good.

Expertise Repatriation:

Dubois, who has been again within the U.S. for six months, is eager to faucet into European expertise whereas repatriating consultants from Silicon Valley.

“I’ve seen the exodus to California and the return since Covid. Repatriating expertise is a precedence—there’s nonetheless untapped potential within the U.S. to carry again.”

Addressing a significant trade problem and stimulating European innovation, Vertical Compute places itself on the coronary heart of AI semiconductor know-how for the long run.

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