Axelera AI start-up emerges with £8.7m backing from Bitfury, imec

Axelera AI, a Dutch AI semiconductor start-up, has emerged from stealth with £8.7 million in seed round funding. The funding was led by Axelera's incubator company, Bitfury, a security and infrastructure provider for the Bitcoin blockchain. Nanoelectronics R&D centre imec and venture capital Innovation Industries also participated in the seed round. Axelera is developing a chipset to accelerate AI and machine learning algorithms at the edge. The startup claims that its product will use minimal power consumption at a greatly reduced price compared to its competitors.