Axelera AI, based at UPTEC – Science and Technology Park of the University of Porto, has announced a funding round of over $250 million. With this investment, the capital raised by the company since its foundation in 2021 exceeds $450 million.

Axelera AI specialises in the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) acceleration semiconductors for use in edge computing and data centres. With an edge-first architecture that ensures data is processed locally, as opposed to centralised models in the cloud and data centres, the company’s semiconductors have already been implemented in more than 500 customers, including in the telecommunications, aerospace and enterprise sectors.

The company’s  success is rooted in a fundamental belief: to implement AI at scale, the industry must first address issues related to energy consumption and cooling requirements, ensuring energy efficiency.  “Data centres are reaching energy and cooling limits, and as analytics move closer to where data is created, AI solutions must operate within strict energy and bandwidth constraints”, explains Fabrizio Del Maffeo, CEO and co-founder of Axelera AI. “We designed our architecture from the ground up to overcome these obstacles. Our edge-first approach makes AI deployment economically viable at scale in the real world, while protecting data and privacy by processing our customers’ information locally.”

The capital raised will enable the company to accelerate its production scale and advance its product development, as well as ensure the expansion of the Axelera AI team with hires focused on customer support.

The investment round was led by Innovation Industries, with participation from funds including BlackRock and SiteGround Capital as new investors, as well as existing investors Bitfury, CDP Venture Capital, European Innovation Council Fund, Federal Holding and Investment Company of Belgium (SFPIM), Invest-NL, Samsung Catalyst Fund and Verve Investments.

04 March 2026