
French supercomputer chip designer SiPearl has raised €90m in the first part of its Series A funding round.
The funding from ARM, super computer maker Atos key industry partners as well as European and French public investors will allow SiPearl to tapeout its Rhea ARM-based supercomputer chip in early 2024 at TSMC.
Rhea is designed to work with any third-party accelerator (GPU, artificial intelligence or quantum and uses the ARM Neoverse V1 platform to halve power consumption for equivalent computing power. SiPearl has been working with AMD, Intel and Nvidia on linking to GPUs and with UK AI accelerator chip and system developer GraphCore.
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Atos is funding the company through its Eviden business, and the European Innovation Council (EIC) Fund has previously announced €15m of backing, while the financing includes up to €25m in convertible debt from the European Investment Bank (EIB).
This first funding milestone brings SiPearl’s total financing to €110.5m, including €20.5m of European Union and French grants provided through the European Processor Initiative (EPI) consortium project, the EIC Accelerator program and Ile-de-France region. Additional investors are expected to join the round by the end of 2023.
The company employs 130 people in France (Maisons-Laffitte, its headquarters, Grenoble, Massy, Sophia Antipolis), Germany (Duisburg) and Spain (Barcelona) but plans to have over 1,000 staff by the end of 2025.
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“Historically lagging behind the US and China, Europe has become a global leader in HPC thanks to the EuroHPC initiative, ranking for the first time two machines among the four most powerful supercomputers in the world, with LUMI in Finland and Leonardo in Italy,” said Philippe Notton, CEO and founder of SiPearl.
“The arrival on the market of SiPearl’s microprocessor Rhea, which will power European supercomputers with a limited environmental footprint, will be another decisive step for Europe’s technological independence and sovereignty. We would like to thank the European Union’s innovation programs, which have championed us all along the way, and the investors who have joined us in this first round of financing for contributing to our success,” he said.
“From the tiniest sensor through to HPC, it takes leadership across the computing spectrum to support the volume of data being created and processed today,” said Mohamed Awad, SVP and GM, Infrastructure Line of Business at ARM.
“ARM is enabling high-performance, energy efficient processing around the globe with its Neoverse platforms, and we are fully supportive of SiPearl’s work to build Rhea, powered by Neoverse V1, into an HPC system that is ready to take on some of the world’s biggest computing challenges.”
“As a European leader in the design, manufacturing, and deployment of supercomputing infrastructures, The Eviden business of Atos has been playing a critical role in various technological European initiatives, e.g. EuroHPC JU and EPI, to support the digital and economical sovereignty of Europe,” said Emmanuel Le Roux, Corporate Senior Vice President, Head of Advanced Computing, HPC and AI, for Eviden at Atos Group.
“Microprocessing units hold the key to the future of HPC, therefore Atos Group welcomes and supports the Europe-grown microprocessor which is extending and solidifying the capacity to deliver European high-performance computer designed to tackle the most important challenges in life science, weather forecast or industries simulations.”
“European Union backed SiPearl from day one. They benefited from a variety of grants as well as the vast European market offered by the EuroHPC initiative. The EIC Fund’s investment is the natural continuation of this long-standing effort to develop, from Europe, an indigenous HPC technology which can compete with the very best in the world,” said Hermann Hauser, the EIC Fund Board member.
“EIB has been following the progress of SiPearl for the last two years and was the first institution to commit to finance SiPearl. This is an illustration of EIB’s strong dedication in supporting innovation and European sovereignty”, added European Investment Bank Vice-President Ambroise Fayolle.
“Developing a strong European HPC supply chain with energy-efficient components and technologies is key to achieving digital sovereignty in Europe while promoting more sustainable supercomputing. The success of SiPearl today is also the success of the European Processor Initiative, one of the research projects funded by the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking”, added Anders Dam Jensen, Executive Director of the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking.
