European Union-backed chipmaker SiPearl has raised 130 million euros (US$152 million) from investors including Taiwan’s Cathay Venture Inc (國泰創投), as Europe pushes for technological sovereignty.
The French start-up, which makes high-performance, energy-efficient processors for artificial intelligence (AI) and supercomputing, said it would use the Series A financing to invest in research and development and to industrialize its Rhea1 chip, which features 80 cores from chip designer Arm Holdings PLC and more than 61 billion transistors, according to a statement yesterday.
The Rhea1 chip will eventually help to power Jupiter, an EU-backed European supercomputer based in Germany and designed for use in strategic fields such as medical research, energy management and defense. SiPearl has recently appointed Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電) to start manufacturing the chip, the company said.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The investment is part of a broader European effort to pursue industrial sovereignty in the field of AI, after the continent missed out on the opportunity to create global internet and cloud companies, relying instead on US and Asian providers.
“The US hyperscalers like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, OpenAI are designing their own chips, and they have the means to do it,” SiPearl chief executive officer Philippe Notton said during a press event. “European cloud players don’t have those means, and will rely on solutions like ours.”
SiPearl is the first French investment for Taiwanese private equity firm Cathay Venture, a subsidiary of Cathay Financial Holding Co (國泰金控), a major investor in semiconductors and electronics. The European Innovation Council Fund, Arm and French IT firm Atos SE also participated in the round.
SiPearl was founded in 2019 and seed-funded by the EU under the European Processor Initiative consortium, which seeks to develop high-performance computing technologies in the continent. The company has 200 employees in France, Spain and Italy, and has set up data centers in France focused on chip design.
SiPearl will be looking to raise 200 million euros for its Series B between next year and 2028, chief financial officer Jean-Luc Gilbert said.
After several years flying high as Asia’s best Nvidia Corp proxy, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is increasingly vying with other artificial intelligence (AI) stocks for investor attention. Stock traders are chasing a wider array of beneficiaries as mainstream usage of AI creates demand for hardware beyond the most-advanced chips TSMC makes for Nvidia. Subthemes from the deepening memory crunch to advances in robotics are also luring bids. At the same time, investment caps on single stocks are pushing funds to diversify, while retail investors long familiar with TSMC through its US depositary receipts are being offered a broader set of
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